BRUNNER 


EDMUND  deS 


CHURCH  LIFE 

IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 

Bv  535  . B7 
Brunner,  Edmund  de 
Schweinitz,  1889- 
Church  life  in  the 
South 


rural 


4 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/churchlifeinrura00brun_0 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN 
THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


The  Committee  on  Social  and  Religious  Surveys  was 
organized  in  January ,  1921.  The  Committee  conducts 
and  publishes  studies  and  surveys  and  promotes  con¬ 
ferences  for  their  consideration.  Its  aim  is  to  com¬ 
bine  the  scientific  method  with  the  religious  motive. 
It  cooperates  with  other  social  and  religious  agencies , 
but  is  itself  an  independent  organization. 


The  Committee  is  composed  of:  John  R.  Mott ,  Chair¬ 
man;  Ernest  D.  Burton ,  Secretary ;  Raymond  B.  Fos- 
dick.  Treasurer ;  James  L.  Barton  and  W.  H.  P. 
Fauncc.  Galen  M.  Fisher  is  Executive  Secretary. 
The  offices  are  at  370  Seventh  Avenue,  New  York 
City. 


A  typical  bit  of  the  old  south 


COMMITTEE  ON  SOCIAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SURVEYS 

TOWN  AND  COUNTRY  DEPARTMENT 

Edmund  deS.  Brunner,  Director 


CHURCH  LIFE 
IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  OPPORTUNITY  OF  PROTESTANTISM 
BASED  UPON  DATA  FROM  SEVENTY  COUNTIES 


BY 

EDMUND  deS.  BRUNNER 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 
AND  MAPS 


NEW 


YORK 


GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1923, 


BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


PREFACE 


IN  the  field  of  town  and  country  the  Committee  on  Social  and 
Religious  Surveys  sought  first  of  all  to  conserve  some  of  the 
results  of  the  surveys  made  by  the  Interchurch  World  Move¬ 
ment.  In  order  to  verify  some  of  these  surveys,  it  carried  on  field 
studies,  described  later,  along  regional  lines  worked  out  by  Dr.  War¬ 
ren  H.  Wilson  and  adopted  by  the  Interchurch  World  Movement. 
These  regions  are : 

I.  Colonial  States:  All  of  New  England,  New  York,  Pennsyl¬ 
vania  and  New  Jersey. 

II.  The-  South :  All  the  States  south  of  Mason  and  Dixon’s 
line  and  the  Ohio  River  east  of  the  Mississippi,  including  Louisiana. 

III.  The  Southern  Highlands  Section :  This  section  comprises 
about  250  counties  in  “the  back  yards  of  eight  Southern  States.’’  See 
Wilson,  “Sectional  Characteristics,”  Homelands,  August,  1920. 

IV.  The  Middle  West:  The  States  of  Ohio,  Indiana,  Michigan, 
Illinois,  Wisconsin,  Iowa  and  northern  Missouri. 

V.  Northwest:  Minnesota,  North  Dakota,  South  Dakota  and 
eastern  Montana. 

VI.  Prairie:  Oklahoma,  Kansas  and  Nebraska. 

VII.  Southwest:  Southern  Missouri,  Arkansas  and  Texas. 

VIII.  Range  or  Mountain:  Arizona,  New  Mexico,  Utah,  Colo¬ 
rado,  Idaho,  Wyoming,  Nevada  and  western  Montana. 

IX.  Pacific:  California,  Oregon  and  Washington. 

Hundreds  of  people  assisted  in  the  survey  process,  but  certain 
specific  acknowledgments  are  due  to  those  who  assisted  in  the  sur¬ 
vey  of  the  counties  presented  in  this  volume. 

The  Director  of  the  Town  and  Country  Survey  Department  for 
the  Interchurch  World  Movement  was  Edmund  deS.  Brunner.  He 
is  likewise  the  Director  of  this  Department  for  the  Committee  on 
Social  and  Religious  Surveys. 

The  original  surveys  in  these  counties  were  under  the  direction 
of  the  following  State  survey  supervisors  for  the  Interchurch  World 
Movement : 

North  Carolina:  Dr.  George  Ramsey  and  Mr.  Chester  Snell, 
assisted  in  these  counties  by  Professor  E.  C.  Branson  and  others. 


PREFACE 


Georgia:  Judge  H.  L.  Anderson  and  Rev.  Robert  H.  Ruff. 

Kentucky :  Rev.  Arthur  Stockbridge. 

West  Virginia:  Prof.  L.  M.  Bristol. 

Alabama :  Rev.  R.  M.  Archibald. 

Tennessee:  Rev.  Dr.  Thomas  Freeman  Dixon,  assisted  in  Blount 
County  by  Maryville  College  students  under  the  direction  of  Pro¬ 
fessor  A.  F.  Southwick. 

Texas :  Rev.  Millar  Burrows. 

South  Carolina:  Rev.  J.  A.  J.  Brock. 

Florida  :  Rev.  R.  E.  Tyler. 

Louisiana :  Rev.  R.  E.  Cholerton. 

Maryland :  Rev.  Dr.  Charles  F.  Scofield. 

Field  workers  of  the  Committee  on  Social  and  Religious  Surveys 
visited  six  of  the  seventy  counties  included  in  this  study  and 
checked  up  the  information.  All  parts  of  the  counties  were  visited 
and  a  thorough  re-survey  was  made.  Miss  Helen  Olive  Belknap 
was  the  field  worker  in  charge  of  this  investigation  in  all  but  one 
county.  That  one  was  studied  by  Miss  Elizabeth  Hooker.  In  one 
county,  that  of  Durham,  North  Carolina,  Miss  Belknap’s  study  fol¬ 
lowed  an  original  investigation  by  Mr.  B.  Y.  Landis,  also  of  the  Com¬ 
mittee  on  Social  and  Religious  Surveys. 

The  Committee  desires  to  acknowledge  its  indebtedness  to  Rev. 
Robert  LI.  Ruff,  Rural  Church  Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Missions 
of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South;  and  to  others  from 
whom  he  received  many  helpful  suggestions  and  who  made  avail¬ 
able  the  results  of  the  survey  of  the  rural  churches  of  forty  presiding 
elders’  conferences.  The  Committee  is  also  grateful  to  the  Com¬ 
mittee  on  Interracial  Relations,  whose  secretaries,  Dr.  W.  W.  Alex¬ 
ander  and  Rev.  Robert  Eleazar,  gave  critical  attention  to  the  chapter 
on  the  Negro  rural  church. 

The  technical  advisor  was  Mr.  H.  N.  Morse  of  the  Presbyterian 
Board  of  Home  Missions,  who  was  also  associate  director  of  the 
Town  and  Country  Survey  in  the  Interchurch  World  Movement. 

Valuable  help  was  given  by  the  Home  Missions  Council ;  by  the 
Council  of  Women  for  Llome  Missions  through  their  sub-Committee 
on  Town  and  Country;  and  by  a  committee  appointed  jointly  for  the 
purpose  of  cooperating  with  the  Committee  on  Social  and  Religious 
Surveys  in  endeavoring  to  translate  the  results  of  the  survey  into 
action.  This  Joint  Committee  is  composed  as  follows: 


Vlll 


PREFACE 


JOINT  COMMITTEE  ON  UTILIZING  SURVEYS 

( Federal  Council ,  Home  Missions  Council,  and  the  Council  of 

IV omen  for  Home  Missions) 

L.  C.  Barnes,  Chairman 


Rodney  W.  Roundy, 

Alfred  W.  Anthony 
Mrs.  Fred  S.  Bennett 
C.  A.  Brooks 
C.  E.  Burton 
Anna  Clark 
A.  E.  Cory 
David  D.  Forsyth 
Roy  B.  Guild 
Rolvix  Harlan 
A.  E.  Holt 

Warren 


Secretary 

R.  A.  Hutchison 
F.  Ernest  Johnson 
C.  N.  Lathrop 
U.  L.  Mackey 
Florence  E.  Quinlan 
A.  E.  Roberts 
Charles  E.  Schaeffer 
W.  P.  Shriver 
Fred  B.  Smith 
Paul  L.  Vogt 
.  Wilson 


IX 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  The  South — A  Goodly  Heritage . 17 

II  Economic  Characteristics . 19 

III  Education  and  Social  Life . 30 

IV  The  Religious  Situation  in  General  ...  .41 

V  Church  Membership . 46 

VI  Shepherds  of  the  Flock . 57 

VII  Equipment  and  Finance  .  . 67 

VIII  Church  Program . 72 

IX  The  Negro  Rural  Church . 80 

X  Conclusions . 93 

Appendices 

I  METHODOLOGY  AND  DEFINITIONS  .  .  .  .113 

II  BIBLIOGRAPHY . 117 


XI 


' 


. 

' 

* 


r 


I 


ILLUSTRATIONS  AND  MAPS 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

A  Typical  Bit  of  the  Old  South  ....  Frontispiece 

PAGE 

A  North  Carolina  Cotton  Gin . 20 

A  Study  in  Barns . 23 

The  Boll  Weevil  Drove  Away  the  Old-Style  Farmer  .  25 

The  New  Farmers’  Fruit  Drove  Away  the  Boll  Weevil  25 

A  Mill  Playground,  Carrboro,  North  Carolina  .  .  27 

The  End  of  the  Country  Trail . 28 

Commencement  Day  Brings  Out  the  Girls’  Clubs  .  .  31 

Commencement  Day  Sports,  Colbert  County,  Alabama  33 

Watching  the  Commencement  Day  Sports,  Colbert 

County,  Alabama . 34 

A  Modern  Public  School  in  Alabama  ...  .35 

The  High  and  Graded  School,  Chapel  Hill,  North  Caro¬ 
lina  .  .  37 

Swimming  Pool  at  Bessie  Tift  College,  Forsyth,  Georgia  39 

Built  According  to  Classic  Southern  Tradition  .  .  42 

A  Country  Church  in  Georgia . 43 

A  Country  Store  in  Blount  County,  Tennessee  .  .  44 

A  Popular  All  Day  Service . 47 

A  Rural  Parishioner’s  Home  in  Alabama  ...  .49 

A  Mountain  Church  in  Tennessee . 57 

Two  Local  Preachers  in  Alabama . 58 

The  Presbyterian  Church,  Chapel  Hill,  North  Carolina  62 

Birthplace  of  Helen  Keller,  Tuscumbia,  Alabama  .  66 

An  Ancient  and  Picturesque  Home . 74 

xiii 


ILLUSTRATIONS  AND  MAPS 

PAGE 

A  Negro  Sunday  School . 82 

A  Checker  Tournament  Outside  the  Store  ...  .83 

An  Afternoon  Lecture  at  a  Negro  Church  ...  .85 

Negro  Members  Fix  Up  Their  Church . 87 

Uncle  Sam  Spreads  the  News  to  the  Mountains  .  .  94 

A  Prosperous  Farm  in  Orange  County,  North  Carolina  103 

Once  a  Crossroad  Store . 105 

A  Rural  Clinic . 107 

MAPS 

Map  of  Communities  and  Parishes  in  Colbert  County, 

Alabama  . 52-53 

Churches  and  Circuits  in  Orange  County,  North  Caro¬ 
lina  . 54 

Durham  County,  North  Carolina  .  .59 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN 
THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


CHURCH  LIFE 
IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


CHAPTER  I 

The  South — A  Goodly  Heritage 

r  I  ^HIS  study  is  one  of  a  series  intended  to  cover  the  situation 
I  of  the  town  and  country  church  in  various  parts  of  the 
United  States.  It  is  a  study  made  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  Church ;  and  in  the  conviction  that  social  and  economic 
conditions  directly  affect  church  life.  For  this  reason  the  early 
chapters  sketch  the  social  and  economic  background  against  which 
will  be  thrown  the  picture  of  the  country  church  in  the  South. 

The  Interchurch  World  Movement’s  complete  survey  of  seventy 
counties  within  the  southern  region  was  used  as  one  information 
source  in  the  preparation  of  this  volume.  These  counties  represent 
every  state  in  the  Old  South  with  the  exception  of  Virginia  and 
Mississippi.  From  these  seventy  counties,  six  were  selected,  each 
of  which  was  visited  and  restudied  by  a  field  worker  representing 
the  Committee  on  Social  and  Religious  Surveys.  These  field 
workers  lived,  often  weeks  at  a  time,  in  the  counties  they  studied. 

The  six  counties  are  Orange  and  Durham  in  North  Carolina, 
Monroe  in  Georgia,  Colbert  in  Alabama,  Blount  in  Tennessee,  and 
Rockwall  in  Texas.  The  last-named  county  is  not  included  in  the 
southern  region  as  defined  in  the  preface ;  but  it  has  been  thought 
best  to  include  it  in  this  work.  Two  of  these  counties,  Orange  and 
Durham,  situated  in  the  north  central  part  of  North  Carolina,  give 
a  fair  picture  of  some  of  the  regions  in  which  cotton  is  not  raised. 

In  one  of  them  is  a  city  which  dominates  the  surrounding 
countryside  and  which  is  growing  more  rapidly  than  that  country¬ 
side.  The  other  is  the  seat  of  the  state  university.  Monroe  County, 
Georgia,  is  in  the  black-soil  belt  of  that  state  and  is  famous  for  its 
cotton.  As  counties  go  in  Georgia  it  is  of  good  size.  In  this  county 
there  has  been,  during  the  last  decade,  a  decrease  of  rural  popula¬ 
tion.  In  Colbert,  the  largest  of  the  six  counties,  both  corn  and 

17 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


cotton  are  grown.  Besides  being  agriculturally  rich,  it  holds,  in 
the  nitrate  resources  of  Muscle  Shoals,  possibilities  of  great  indus¬ 
trial  expansion. 

Rockwall  is  the  smallest  county  in  the  biggest  state.  For  an 
agricultural  district,  it  is  densely  populated  with  fifty-eight  people 
to  the  square  mile.  Its  land  is  very  fertile.  It  has  more  wealth 
per  capita  than  any  other  agricultural  county  in  the  state,  and  its 
wealth  is  chiefly  derived  from  cotton,  corn  and  stock.  The  last 
county  is  Blount,  in  the  mountain  region  of  Tennessee.  It  con¬ 
tains  both  fertile  valley  land  and  mountainous  districts  and  to  that 
extent  is  representative  of  the  varied  conditions  found  in  the  Ap¬ 
palachian  counties.  It  is  rich  in  timber. 

These  counties  exemplify  the  movements  and  changes  which 
have  taken  place  in  the  South  during  the  last  century.  There  have 
been  settlements  in  all  but  one  of  them  for  a  hundred  years  or  more. 
It  is  believed  that  these  six  counties  are  fairly  representative  of  the 
region  in  which  they  lie.  They  have  been  selected  more  to  indicate 
the  direction  in  which  the  South  is  moving  than  to  stress  those 
retarding  conditions  within  the  South  which  happily  are  disap¬ 
pearing. 

1  he  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  be  helpful.  It  is  believed  that  the 
situations  discovered  and  the  problems  disclosed  by  this  Survey  will 
be  found  so  like  those  in  other  places  as  to  give  far  more  than 
local  value  to  certain  policies  here  proposed  and  programs  sug¬ 
gested.  And  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  conclusions  presented  in 
this  volume  will  prove  to  be  of  value  not  only  to  churches,  church 
boards  and  societies,  but  also  to  social  and  educational  agencies 
interested  in  the  general  problems  of  rural  religious  and  social  work. 

The  attention  of  the  reader  is  called  to  the  fact  that  towns  of 
more  than  5,000  inhabitants  have  not  been  drawn  upon  for  the 
statistical  data  made  use  of  in  this  volume. 


38 


CHAPTER  II 


Economic  Characteristics 

PRIOR  to  the  Civil  War  the  South  was  almost  entirely  rural, 
and  even  yet  there  are  more  people,  proportionately,  living 
in  rural  communities  in  the  South  than  in  any  other  part  of 
this  country.  But  while  it  is  still  the  country  '‘where  the  corn  and 
cotton  grow,”  the  city  of  Atlanta  has  increased  from  154,000  to 
200,000  in  the  last  census  period ;  Birmingham  has  added  nearly 
50,000  to  its  former  population  of  132,000;  and  the  city  of  Knox¬ 
ville,  Tennessee,  has  more  than  doubled  the  36,000  which  it  had 
in  1910.  These  figures  are  typical  of  what  has  happened  to  scores 
of  southern  cities.  In  every  state  there  has  been  a  steady  decrease 
in  the  proportion  of  the  rural  to  the  total  population,  as  shown  in 
the  last  three  census  periods.  In  Maryland,  Mississippi,  and  Ten¬ 
nessee  there  has  been  an  actual  decrease  in  the  rural  population  in 
the  last  decade.  For  the  South  as  a  whole  the  population  has  in¬ 
creased  30.6  per  cent,  since  1900;  but  the  rural  population  has 
gained  only  14.9  per  cent.  More  than  two-thirds  of  this  rural 
gain  was  made  in  the  first  decade  of  the  century.  To-day  the  South 
is  72.4  per  cent,  rural.  In  1900  it  was  82.3  per  cent. 

The  Riches  of  the  Earth 


The  South  includes  nearly  one-third  of  the  total  area  of  the 
Union.  It  is  richer  in  natural  resources  than  any  other  equal  area 
in  the  world.  It  has  three-fifths  of  the  coast  line  of  the  continental 
United  States.  It  produces  more  than  60  per  cent,  of  the  world’s 
cotton.  Its  natural  gas  fields  are  the  greatest  known  in  the  world. 
It  has  the  largest  sulphur  deposits  in  the  world,  producing  three- 
fourths  of  the  world’s  supply.  The  bulk  of  the  raw  materials  as 
well  as  the  factories  for  aluminum  are  found  in  the  South.  Three- 
quarters  of  the  coking  coal  area  of  America  lies  within  the  South. 
Its  coal  area  is  twice  that  of  all  Europe,  including  Russia.  Forty 
per  cent,  of  our  forest  resources  is  in  the  South.  Here,  too,  lie 
fifty-five  million  acres  of  reclaimable  land,  which  could  be  made  to 

19 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


produce  crops  worth  from  two  to  four  billion  dollars  a  year.  To¬ 
bacco  flourishes  in  some  sections.  In  the  fields  of  the  South  are 
corn,  rice,  cane,  peanuts,  or  grazing  live  stock.  Annually  it  sends 
several  thousand  carloads  of  fruit  to  Northern  and  Middle  Western 
markets.  From  its  ports  in  1921  $1,867,000,000  worth  of  goods 
were  exported,  a  total  five  times  larger  than  for  all  Pacific  Coast 
ports.  New  Orleans  is  second  only  to  New  York  as  a  port. 

This  is,  economically,  the  South.  It  stands  on  the  verge  of  a 
tremendous  industrial  development.  More,  perhaps,  than  any  other 


A  NORTH  CAROLINA  COTTON  GIN 


section  of  the  country,  the  South  will  attract  industrial  enterprises 
during  the  coming  decade.  The  Great  War  marked  the  beginning 
of  a  new  period  in  the  history  of  the  South.  Wages  very  greatly 
increased. 


The  Land  of  Cotton 

One  important  aspect  of  this  industrial  expansion  is  to  be  found 
in  the  rapid  increase  in  cotton-mills.  Whole  villages  grow  up  about 
a  mill  or  several  mills.  The  increase  in  the  number  of  these  mills 
is  bringing  the  Carolinas,  which  head  the  list  of  southern  states  in 
the  number  of  persons  employed  in  the  manufacturing  of  cotton 
goods,  into  active  competition  with  Massachusetts.  The  tendency 
seems  more  and  more  to  have  the  mill  located  near  the  source  of 
supply.  This  effects  a  saving  in  freight  charges  and  a  reduction  in 

20 


ECONOMIC  CHARACTERISTICS 


cost  to  the  mill  owners  because  labor  is  cheaper.  This  labor  is 
drawn  largely  from  the  surrounding  rural  districts;  but  the  cotton- 
mill  village  has  no  direct  relation  to  contiguous  rural  territory  in  the 
sense  that  an  average  village  has.  The  people  live  in  an  industrial 
environment  that  is  neither  rural  nor  urban.  The  homes  in  these 
communities  are  usually  the  property  of  the  mill  owners  who  often 
maintain  or  assist  the  school,  such  welfare  work  as  may  be  carried 
on,  and  even  the  church.  There  were  not  enough  cotton-mills  in  the 
basic  counties  of  this  study  to  furnish  ground  for  any  broad  con¬ 
clusions  as  to  the  scope  and  policy  of  social  and  church  work  of  the 
million  inhabitants  of  these  villages.  Enough  mill  communities  were 
studied,  however,  to  show  in  a  general  way  what  the  problem  is. 

It  may  be  true,  as  one  woman  worker  said :  “Once  a  cotton- 
miller  always  a  cotton-miller.”  Nevertheless  there  is  a  great  deal  of 
transiency  among  the  hands.  They  do  not  drift  to  the  city,  but  from 
one  to  another  of  the  mills  or  to  the  country.  Owing  to  this  con¬ 
stantly  unsettled  condition,  enduring  church  work  is  very  difficult. 
In  one  mill,  only  2  per  cent,  of  the  workers  had  been  there  more 
than  four  vears.  In  another,  about  one-fifth  had  been  there  ten 
years ;  but  this  was  held  to  be  most  exceptional.  Typical  of  this 
phenomenon  is  the  statement  of  one  family  in  which  there  were  six 
children  : 

We*  were  married  at  Lake  Mill  in -  County.  We  stayed 

there  about  a  couple  of  years,  then  we  farmed  about  a  year.  Then 
we  went  back  to  the  cotton-mill  and  stayed  about  two  or  three  years. 
Then  we  went  to  Woodburg  and  farmed  for  a  year  and  a  half.  Then 
we  went  back  to  Lake  Mill  and  worked  about  six  months  and  then  we 
moved  to  Smith  County  to  this  mill  and  stayed  here  about  five  years. 
In  the  spring  we  moved  hack  to  the  Lake^Mill  and  stopped  there 
until  Christmas.  Then  we  took  to  farming  for  three  or  four  months. 
We  went  back  to  the  Hampton  Mill  and  worked  about  two  weeks 
and  then  moved  to  the  Triffin  Mill  and  stayed  there  two  years. 
Then  we  moved  back  here  and  we  have  been  here  a  year  and  a  half. 
The  last  time  we  tried  farming,  the  man  who  rented  us  the  land 
quarreled  over  everything  he  furnished  us.  Then  he  didn’t  like  our 
puppies  and  threatened  to  shoot  them,  so  we  moved. 


Economic  Migrations 

In  times  of  average  prosperity  there  is  little  migration  from  the 
farms  to  the  cotton-mills.  Those  farmers  who  are  attracted  to  the 
mills  are  almost  without  exception  tenants.  When  the  peak  of  pros- 

*  Their  names  are  fictitious. 

21 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


perity  is  reached,  families  begin  leaving  the  mills  to  take  up  farming; 
but  those  from  the  communities  studied  were  all  back  in  the  mills 
again  within  from  three  to  seven  months.  Some  did  not  even  wait 
to  gather  their  crops.  With  the  deflation  of  prices  and  the  spread 
of  the  boll  weevil,  the  tide  set  back  from  the  farm  to  the  cotton- 
mill,  and  in  1921  the  mills  were  flooded  with  applicants  from  the 
farms. 

Economically,  the  mills  are  a  help  to  the  South  as  a  whole,  for 
cotton-mill  people  work  at  a  weekly  wage  and  spend  money  freely. 
Said  one  local  merchant :  “Without  the  mills  we’d  all  be  busted. 
The  mills  keep  up  the  town  and  the  town  keeps  up  the  farmer.” 
Wages,  however,  are  not  very  high  :  this  has  been  true  especially 
since  the  collapse  of  the  cotton  market,  which  brought  about  wage 
reductions  of  from  one-fifth  to  one-third.  At  the  time  of  this 
Survey,  white  men  received  from  $1.75  to  $2.50  a  day  and  white 
women  from  $1.34  to  $1.84.  Negro  men  and  Negro  women  re¬ 
ceived  about  the  same  wage,  varying  from  $1.10  to  $1.25.  Boys 
and  girls  earned  from  $3.50  to  $9.00  a  week,  according  to  their 
efficiency. 

There  is  little  incentive  for  the  cotton-mill  hand  to  be  progressive. 
He  is  not  permitted  to  own  his  own  home  and  is  limited  to  the 
alternative  of  working  in  the  cotton-mill  or  raising  cotton.  A 
number  of  the  mills  seek  to  create  a  social  life  for  their  employees, 
and  this  policy  should  be  rapidly  extended.  In  the  smaller  communi¬ 
ties,  especially,  very  little  is  done  to  improve  social  conditions.  Nor 
is  much  attention  paid  to  other  matters  of  general  concern.  In  the 
communities  surveyed  surface  water  came  from  wells,  none  of  which 
had  recently  been  analyzed.  Typhoid  was  epidemic  at  one  place. 
None  of  the  mills  had  company  physicians,  although  certain  doctors 
were  always  called  in  case  of  accident.  There  are  no  nurses  or 
hospitals  in  these  towns.  Epidemics  once  started  spread  rapidly. 
Conditions  in  some  of  the  larger  villages  are  known  to  be  somewhat 
better. 

The  Church  is  doing  very  little.  In  fact,  it  is  neglecting  some  of 
1  the  mill  communities.  It  must  adapt  its  program  to  the  changed 
conditions  of  life  of  its  members  who  work  in  the  mills;  and  must 
take  an  active  interest  in  the  problems  raised  by  the  control  of 
communities  in  large  places  by  industries,  or  by  capitalists  who 
never  see  the  towns  in  which  their  employees  live  and  who,  there¬ 
fore,  feel  little  responsibility  for  conditions. 

The  South’s  greatest  wealth,  however,  is  in  agriculture.  In 
1920  the  value  of  her  crops  totalled  nearly  $5,000,000,000,  as  com- 


ECONOMIC  CHARACTERISTICS 


Tenancy 


Permanency 
A  STUDY  IN  BARNS 


23 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


pared  with  little  more  than  $1,500,000,000  ten  years  before.  The 
basic  crop  of  the  South  is  cotton ;  and  as  cotton  has  gone  so  has 
gone  the  South,  whose  periodic  depressions  have  been  caused  by  the 
low  price  of  cotton  more  than  by  anything  else. 

Late  years  have  brought  a  new  menace  to  the  agriculture  of  the 
South,  the  boll  weevil.  Since  it  gained  entrance  into  this  region  it 
has  pushed  its  line  of  advance  farther  and  farther  into  the  cotton 
country  until  now  it  has  reached  every  cotton-growing  state.  The 
destructive  work  of  the  boll  weevil,  made  the  more  calamitous  by 
the  dependence  of  the  South  so  largely  on  imported  foodstuffs,  of 
which  as  much  as  $500,000,000  worth  was  required  in  the  year 
before  the  war,  has  led  to  a  campaign  for  diversified  agriculture. 
The  effect  of  this  campaign  is  beginning  to  appear  in  the  census 
figures.  In  1910  cotton  was  the  chief  crop  in  five  states;  in  1920 
it  was  the  chief  crop  in  but  four.  The  cotton  acreage,  moreover, 
decreased  in  virtually  every  state  except  Texas.  The  acreage  in 
corn,  on  the  other  hand,  increased.  This  same  tendency  is  apparent 
in  the  counties  under  consideration  in  this  study.  In  some  regions 
an  important  stimulus  to  crop  diversification  was  furnished  in  the 
last  year  or  two  by  the  refusal  of  bankers  to  lend  to  farmers  who 
would  not  sign  an  agreement  to  reduce  their  cotton  acreage  and 
diversify  their  crops. 


Tenancy  and  Instability 

Tenancy  presents  one  of  the  gravest  problems  which  the  rural 
South  faces  to-day.  It  has  steadily  increased  from  39  per  cent,  in 
1890  to  approximately  50  per  cent,  in  1920.  While  tenancy  is  more 
common  in  the  cotton-growing  states,  it  is  general  in  other  southern 
states  as  well.  There  are  six  states  in  which  more  than  half  the 
farmers  are  tenants ;  and  in  three  of  the  six  the  ratio  is  nearly  two 
in  every  three. 

A  great  deal  of  the  tenancy  is,  of  course,  among  Negroes;  but  it 
exists  also  among  the  white  farmers  to  a  larger  extent  than  is 
generally  believed.  Meanwhile,  in  a  number  of  communities,  Ne¬ 
groes  are  slowly  coming  into  the  ownership  of  land.  At  least  in 
the  seventy  counties  one  white  farmer  out  of  every  three  is  a  tenant ; 
and  in  fifteen  of  these  counties  one  out  of  every  two.  With  the 
one-year  lease  which  prevails,  tenancy  means  a  shifting  population; 
and  it  is  difficult  to  establish  or  maintain  enduring  churches  or 
social  institutions  in  counties  in  which  the  tenancy  rate  is  high. 
More  than  one  promising  cooperative  organization  in  the  South, 

24 


ECONOMIC  CHARACTERISTICS 


THE  BOLL  WEEVIL  DROVE  AWAY  THE  OLD-STYLE  FARMER 


THE  NEW  FARMERS’  FRUIT  DROVE  AWAY  THE  BOLL  WEEVIL 


25 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


and  many  rural  churches,  have  been  laid  low  by  the  restlessness  of 
the  tenant  farmer. 

The  tenancy  system  in  the  South  varies.  Roughly  speaking, 
there  are  five  plans  of  farming  based  on  the  relation  of  the  farmer 
to  the  soil.  One  is  the  cropping  system  in  which  the  “cropper”  is 
little  more  than  a  manager  and  has  very  little  capital  invested  in  the 
farm.  For  his  labor  he  is  paid  one-half  the  crop.  This  is  the  kind 
of  tenancy  that  has  been  most  commonly  written  of  in  articles  about 
the  South.  The  second  system,  which  is  rapidly  disappearing,  is 
the  one  in  which  the  renter  is  the  chief  manager  and  capitalist.  He 
pays  the  landlord  one-third  of  the  grain  and  one-quarter  of  the 
cotton  as  rent. 

In  a  variation  of  this  plan,  the  tenant  pays  an  agreed-upon  part 
of  the  product,  such  as  a  fixed  amount  of  the  crop  each  year,  regard¬ 
less  of  the  yield.  It  has  been  said  by  several  economists  that  this 
plan  is  becoming  more  general,  as  is  also  the  fixed  money  rental  plan. 
Then  there  are,  of  course,  the  small  farms  operated  by  part  owners; 
and  the  plantations  where  farming  on  a  large  scale  is  carried  on  and 
where  the  landlord  as  owner  and  capitalist  deals  with  his  help  as  if 
they  were  laborers.  Some  feel  that  this  system  is  likely  to  supplant 
the  “cropper.”  The  original  purpose  of  cropping  was  to  meet  the 
needs  of  those  who  were  without  capital.  The  landlord  was  then  to 
exercise  control  over  the  farming  operations:  but,  generally  speak¬ 
ing,  he  did  not  exercise  enough  supervision  to  insure  success.* 

Agricultural  Agencies 

The  six  counties  which  have  been  chosen  as  representative  of 
the  seventy,  exemplify  many  of  the  economic  developments  of  the 
rural  South.  All  six  have  had,  or  still  may  share,  the  advantages 
of  a  farm  bureau  and  a  county  agent,  and  in  some  cases,  a  county 
demonstration  agent  under  the  supervision  of  a  farm  bureau  or,  as 
it  is  called  in  certain  communities,  the  County  Council  of  Agricul¬ 
ture.  Farmers  have  been  taught  to  increase  production,  and  have 
witnessed  demonstrations  of  improved  farming  methods;  problems  of 
marketing  have  been  studied  and  sometimes  solved ;  classes  have 
been  held ;  fairs  or  exhibits  have  been  organized ;  short  courses  have 
been  put  on  in  the  schools  for  adult  farmers ;  clubs  have  been 
formed  for  adults,  but  chiefly  for  boys  and  girls ;  and  cooperative 
enterprises  have  been  nurtured. 

*  “Economics  of  Land  Tenure  in  Georgia,”  E.  W.  Banks. 

26 


ECONOMIC  CHARACTERISTICS 


Such  organizations  as  the  Products  Exchange  of  Blount  County 
have  been  established.  Other  organizations,  such  as  the  Sheep  and 
Wool  Producers’  Organization,  have  grown  out  of  the  farm  bureaus. 
The  Farmers’  Union  has  local  groups  in  a  number  of  the  counties; 
but  it  is  most  active  in  Colbert  County.  Both  the  Union  and  certain 
cooperative  enterprises  of  the  Farm  Bureau  have  been  killed  by  the 
shifting  of  population  accounted  for  by  the  high  tenancy  rate.  Per¬ 
haps  the  most  interesting  cooperative  enterprises  are  the  credit 
unions  in  Durham  County,  one  of  which  has  received  considerable 
publicity  and  illustrates  very  well  the  workings  of  this  possibly  suc- 


A  MILL  PLAYGROUND,  CARRBORO,  NORTH  CAROLINA 


cessful  attempt  to  solve  the  credit  problems  of  the  American  farmer. 

One  of  the  outstanding  characteristics  in  the  rural  life  of  the 
South  is  the  large  trade-area  community.  The  influence  of  the 
county-seat  town  extends  farther  out  into  the  country  in  the  South 
than  almost  anywhere  else.  Merchants  of  the  counties  studied 
report  a  far  larger  percentage  of  their  trade  as  coming  from  the 
countryside  than  would  the  county-seat  merchants  in  any  other  part 
of  the  country  except  the  Pacific  Coast.  The  county  seat  becomes 
the  shipping  point  for  almost  all  produce  raised  by  the  farmer. 

Neglected  Opportunities 

On  the  other  hand,  the  southern  city  does  not  get  very  much 
of  its  produce  from  the  neighboring  countryside.  In  too  many 

27 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


instances  the  farmers  have  not  yet  availed  themselves  of  the  neigh¬ 
boring  urban  markets  for  high-grade  vegetables  and  dairy  products. 
At  present  a  few  farmers  peddle  from  door  to  door  the  surplus  of 
the  produce  raised  for  their  home  use ;  and  this,  at  the  best,  is  a  very 
unsatisfactory  practice.  It  was  found,  in  consequence,  that  in  the 
city  of  Durham  some  of  the  fresh  vegetables  reached  the  stores  from 
as  far  away  as  Washington,  D.  C.,  nearly  three  hundred  miles  to  the 
north. 

Whether  or  not  poor  roads  have  any  connection  with  this  neg- 


THE  END  OF  THE  COUNTRY  TRAIL 
Many  a  farm-bred  lad  finds  his  way  at  last  into  the  cotton  factory 


lect  of  opportunities  is  a  significant  question.  “Let’s  get  out  of  the 
mud  and  stay  out’’  is  the  slogan  of  one  county  newspaper  in  the 
South;  and  those  few  words  tell  a  big  story  of  the  condition  of  the 
roads  in  many  sections  of  this  area.  Having  only  one  or  two  crops, 
which  can  be  shipped  at  a  season  when  the  roads  are  apt  to  be  in 
good  condition,  the  farmer  is  more  easily  satisfied  with  poor  trans¬ 
portation  facilities  than  is  the  trucker  or  dairyman  who  goes  daily 
to  a  neighboring  city.  In  late  years,  however,  sentiment  in  the 
South  has  been  changing.  The  Federal  Road  Act,  together  with 
bond  issues  in  some  states  and  agitation  by  automobile  and  “good 
roads  associations,”  has  led  to  constant  efforts  for  improved  roads 
throughout  the  South. 


28 


ECONOMIC  CHARACTERISTICS 


The  farmer  is  coming  to  see  that  this  improvement  will  stop 
some  crop  wastage,  will  stimulate  trade  and  bring  him  closer  to 
markets.  During  the  first  ten  months  of  1922  fourteen  of  the  states 
included  in  the  southern  region  floated  bond  issues  for  road  build¬ 
ing  amounting  to  many  millions  of  dollars.  North  Carolina’s  issue 
exceeded  $26,000,000,  Florida’s  was  more  than  $7,000,000,  and  those 
of  five  other  states  exceeded  $3,000,000  each.  Blount  County,  Ten¬ 
nessee,  has  lifted  its  traffic  out  of  the  mire  by  a  bonded  expenditure 
of  a  million  and  one-half  dollars  in  the  last  five  years.  As  roads 
are  improved  rural  communities  will  enlarge,  undergo  perhaps  a 
regrouping,  and  as  a  result  denominations  will  have  to  face  the  ques¬ 
tion  as  to  whether  or  not  they  have  churches  of  their  own  competing 
with  one  another  in  the  same  community.  The  Survey  shows  in¬ 
stances  of  precisely  this  problem  of  redistribution;  and  the  reason 
for  it  was  always  found  to  be  improvement  in  transportation  condi¬ 
tions  after  the  erection  of  the  church. 

The  economic  future  of  the  South  seems,  therefore,  to  lie  along 
the  lines  of  industrial  expansion  in  the  cities,  and  of  diversified 
agriculture,  with  better  transportation  to  ensure  and  facilitate  these 
developments.  There  remains  to  be  worked  out  in  the  South  between 
town  and  country  an  adjustment  of  the  labor  supply.  The  South 
is  probably  entering  the  cycle  of  rural  life  through  which  many 
parts  of  this  country,  following  New  England’s  lead,  have  passed. 
If  the  South  profits  by  this  experience  of  other  parts  of  the  country, 
it  may  be  able  to  solve  its  rural  problem  almost  as  it  arises. 


29 


CHAPTER  III 


Education  and  Social  Life 


THE  intense  economic  development  of  the  South  during  the 
last  five  or  six  years  has  been  paralleled  in  large  measure, 
where  that  development  has  been  greatest,  by  a  marked 
change  in  social  conditions. 

In  the  background  of  all  social  life  in  the  South  lie  two  things: 

the  more  important  is  the  aftermath  of  the  Civil  War  and  the 

other  is  illiteracy.  Both  of  these  are  disappearing.  Conditions 
resulting  from  the  war  produced  in  the  Southern  farmer  a  psy¬ 
chology  of  discouragement.  Reconstruction  and  readjustment  were 
difficult.  He  had  neither  the  means  nor  the  time  to  make  use  of 
the  social  discoveries  and  experiences  of  the  rest  of  the  country. 

War  was  blamed  for  many  things,  became  a  scapegoat  for  every 

entrenched  abuse,  and  for  every  refusal  to  step  forward.  This  was 
only  natural,  for  life  in  the  South  had  to  be  entirely  reorganized; 
and  in  the  period  when  the  rest  of  the  country  was  opening  up  new 
lands  and  concerned  with  new  enterprises,  the  South  was  unable 
to  forge  ahead  but  had  to  concern  itself  with  rebuilding  its  homes 
and  industries  and  reorganizing  its  life. 

Illiteracy  is  one  of  the  results  of  the  social  situation  growing  out 
of  the  Civil  War,  though  the  war  can  hardly  be  held  entirely  re¬ 
sponsible  for  it.  In  the  mountains,  poor  roads  and  poverty  had 
much  to  do  with  it.  The  rate  of  illiteracy  among  all  males  over 
twenty-one  years  of  age  varies  from  23.6  per  cent,  in  Louisiana  to 
6.9  per  cent,  in  Maryland.  Among  white  males  also  these  states 
represent  the  extremes,  the  figures  being  16.9  per  cent,  and  3.5  per 
cent,  respectively.  For  the  southern  region,  the  decrease  in  illiteracy 
among  white  males  in  the  last  census  period  has  been  one-third,  the 
figure  now  being  7.8  per  cent. 


Illiteracy  and  Tenancy 

Illiteracy  bears  a  distinct  relation  to  the  economic  life.  In  this 
connection  Professor  Branson,  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina, 
says  of  certain  southern  counties:  “From  one-half  to  three-fourths 

SO 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE 


of  the  operating  farmers  are  tenants.  Tenancy  breeds  illiteracy  and 
illiteracy  breeds  tenancy.  Neither  can  be  obliterated  alone.  The 
country  church  must  destroy  illiteracy  and  tenancy  or  together 
illiteracy  and  tenancy  will  at  last  destroy  the  country  church.” 
Tenancy,  with  the  economic  aspects  of  which  we  have  dealt  in  the 
last  chapter,  is  one  of  the  results  of  the  breaking  up  of  the  large 
plantations  after  the  Civil  War. 

As  for  illiteracy,  and  the  psychology  of  depression  which  has 
been  alluded  to,  both  are  rapidly  disappearing.  Attention  is  being 
centered  upon  these  two  evils  and  the  net  result  is  a  richer  com- 


COMMENCEMENT  DAY  BRINGS  OUT  THE  GIRLS*  CLUBS 


munity  life  and  a  rising  tide  of  community  consciousness.  Im¬ 
provement  is  being  made  in  education,  health,  and  general  social 
conditions ;  and  this  improvement  is  well  exemplified  by  develop¬ 
ment  within  the  half  dozen  counties  which  formed  the  basis  for  the 
intensive  part  of  this  investigation. 

The  southern  community  is  not  basically  economic.  From  a 
trade  and  shipping  point  of  view  the  county  is  often  a  unit  in  itself. 
Such  a  unit  is  too  large  for  the  organization  of  social  life  and 
smaller  communities  are  formed  around  social  interests.  Some¬ 
times  the  boundaries  have  been  set  by  geographic  conditions,  as  in 
the  mountainous  districts ;  but  the  social  community  is  apt  to  cluster 
around  the  church,  the  school,  or  the  little  neighborhood  store  and 
crossroads  senate  that  often  is  not  open  more  than  part  of  the  time 
each  day.  Several  states  have  given  to  these  units  the  right  to 

31 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


organize  for  certain  purposes.  These  purposes  are  various.  Per¬ 
haps  a  consolidated  school  is  desired,  or  perhaps  a  credit  union. 
Except  where  it  is  organized  for  a  credit  union,  a  community  in  the 
South  is  much  less  likely  to  have  an  economic  basis  than  is  a  com¬ 
munity  anywhere  else  in  the  country. 

County  and  Private  Agencies 

The  dominance  of  the  county  seat  has  fostered  a  more  dominant 
county  spirit  than  is  found  anywhere  else  in  America,  except,  per¬ 
haps,  in  the  West;  and  the  county  agent  movement  has  tended  to 
strengthen  this.  In  North  Carolina  a  state  law  now  permits  every 
county  to  have  a  superintendent  of  public  welfare  who,  in  real¬ 
ity,  is  the  social  service  secretary  for  the  county.  This  is  just 
one  of  the  indications  of  the  rising  tide  of  social  interest  through¬ 
out  the  entire  South  which  is  largely  the  result  of  the  Great 
War. 

The  South  had,  in  the  war  industrial  communities  and  in  the 
cantonments,  practical  demonstration  of  the  possibilities  of  recrea¬ 
tional  and  other  welfare  work.  New  desires  were  awakened  in  the 
minds  of  many  people ;  and  the  possibility  of  a  social  life  undreamed 
of  before  was  revealed.  Efforts  to  satisfy  these  desires  and  to  de¬ 
velop  the  possibility  have  been  made  by  wise  leaders  in  some  of  the 
states  and  in  many  of  the  counties.  The  Red  Cross  assisted  in  this 
effort  and  still  in  part  sustains  it.  As  a  volunteer  agency,  the  Blount 
County  Red  Cross  may  be  taken  as  an  example.  Its  work,  besides, 
shows  something  of  the  health  situation.  The  Blount  County  health 
unit  examined  more  than  2,000  school  children  for  physical  defects 
and  found  malnutrition,  adenoids,  imperfect  sight  or  hearing  in  83 
per  cent.  Eye  diseases  and  blood-poisoning,  often  due  to  the 
absence  of  antiseptic  precautions,  are  prevalent  and  serious.  Tu¬ 
berculosis  and  typhoid  also  claim  many  victims.  One  of  the  chief 
causes  of  disease  is  the  pollution  of  the  soil  and  of  the  water  supply. 
Streams  are  used  as  sewers,  while  springs  and  shallow  wells  are 
not  safeguarded.  Housing  and  sanitary  conditions  have  been  poor 
and  medical  care  has  been  inadequate. 

The  splendid  campaign  waged  by  the  Rockefeller  Foundation 
against  the  hookworm  disease  throws  light  on  the  general  situation 
and  shows  the  necessity  for  betterment.  It  is  with  such  problems 
as  these  that  the  Blount  County  Red  Cross  grapples,  employing  a 
nurse  on  full-time  and  a  physician  for  part-time.  In  addition  to 
this,  the  Red  Cross  has  formed  Home  Service  Committees,  ex- 

OQ 

1/ 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE 

tended  relief  where  necessary,  and  aided  ex-service  men  and  their 
families. 

Durham  County,  North  Carolina,  furnishes  an  excellent  ex¬ 
ample  of  how  to  deal  with  the  health  problem.  There  the  city  and 
county  governments  have  combined  in  the  establishment  of  one 
health  department  with  an  efficient  staff  of  workers.  It  employs 
a  nurse  for  both  city  and  country  visitation ;  has  charge  of  school 
inspection ;  operates  a  clinic ;  and  is  responsible,  among  other  things, 
for  the  inspection  of  dairies,  water,  and  meat  supplies.  It  is  doing 
a  highly  commendable  piece  of  work  which  should  both  inspire  like 
effort  elsewhere  and  receive  continued  local  support. 


COMMENCEMENT  DAY  SPORTS,  COLBERT  COUNTY,  ALABAMA 


Going  to  Church  for  Recreation 

“What  do  we  do  for  recreation?”  asked  one  Southern  woman, 
repeating  the  surveyor’s  question.  “Why,  we  go  to  church.”  What 
a  chance  for  the  church!  Of  the  138  communities  in  the  six  basic 
counties,  only  three  have  moving-picture  theaters,  two  have  dance 
halls,  less  than  half  a  dozen  of  the  communities  have  pool-rooms ;  and 
apart  from  the  schools  there  are  organized  athletics  in  only  seven. 
A  solitary  band  finds  close  relationship  to  three  orchestras  and  six 
singing  schools.  One  lonely  Chamber  of  Commerce  booms  its  town. 
Through  the  influence  of  the  schools,  fifteen  communities  have 
civic  or  community  clubs  and  nearly  a  dozen  Parent-Teacher  As- 

33 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


sociations.  More  of  the  latter  are  rapidly  forming,  especially  in 
Colbert  County,  where  it  is  hoped  soon  to  have  a  county  federation 
of  Parent-Teacher  Associations.  There  are  twenty-one  women’s 
clubs,  three- fourths  of  them  in  one  county,  which  also  has  sixteen 
girls’  clubs  under  the  care  of  the  Home  Demonstration  Agent. 
Six  communities  have  patrols  of  Boy  Scouts. 

As  regards  clubs  for  boys  and  girls,  the  experience  of  West 


WATCHING  THE  COMMENCEMENT  DAY  SPORTS,  COLBERT  COUNTY,  ALABAMA 

Virginia  may  be  cited.  There  the  County  Agent,  assisted  by  in¬ 
structors  from  the  Extension  Division  of  the  College  of  Agriculture, 
has  organized  four  “H  Clubs”  among  the  boys  and  girls  of  the 
state.  The  four  H’s  stand  for  head,  hand,  heart  and  health,  and 
the  children  are  scored  on  seven  items  under  each  of  these  divisions, 
the  total  possible  number  of  points  under  each  H  being  1,000.  This 
scoring  takes  into  account  efforts  to  live  up  to  the  Golden  Rule, 
religious  training,  attendance  at  church  and  Sunday  school  activi¬ 
ties.  In  the  summer  of  1920,  there  were  twenty-eight  camps  in 
the  state  under  the  auspices  of  these  clubs,  with  1,300  children 

34 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE 


attending.  The  program  was  educational  and  recreational.  These 
clubs  have  spread  to  other  states. 

In  all  the  six  counties  there  is  no  public  library ;  but  this  need 
is  met  in  part  by  the  libraries  in  the  educational  institutions,  and 
the  small  public  school  libraries,  averaging  about  fifty  volumes, 
which  are  to  be  found  in  100  communities.  This  resume  of  the 
recreational  assets  leaves  out  of  account  that  neighborly  spirit 
which  permeates  most  of  the  Southern  communities,  and  which  is 
responsible  for  much  inter-family  and  inter-neighborhood  visiting, 
and  for  other  social  affairs  which  are  naturally  not  subject  to 
statistical  treatment. 


A  MODERN  PUBLIC  SCHOOL  IN  ALABAMA 


Other  Welfare  Work 

If  any  one  thing  differentiates  the  social  organizations  in  the 
South  from  those  in  other  sections  of  the  country,  it  is  the  fact 
that  so  much  of  that  which  is  worth  while  is  done  by  official  or 
semi-official  agencies.  Elsewhere  voluntary  organizations  care  for 
many  needs,  but  in  the  South  the  stirring  of  social  interest  has 
been  so  recent  and  the  voluntary  agencies  are  so  weak  that  the 
state  has  done  much  which  states  in  other  parts  of  the  country 
have  not  done  and  could  not  do.  Just  what  the  result  of  this  will 
be  is  an  interesting  problem  for  speculation. 

The  work,  however,  has  had  the  effect  of  producing  leadership 
and  community  spirit.  Of  the  communities  in  the  six  basic  coun- 

35 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


ties,  70  per  cent,  have  men  or  women  who  are  recognized  as  being 
influential,  and  even  as  having  determining  voices,  in  matters  of 
common  concern.  Of  these  leaders,  three-fifths  are  farmers  and 
one-fifth  merchants  or  business  men  ;  the  remainder  are  professional 
people  such  as  preachers,  lawyers,  or  teachers,  or  they  are  women 
of  the  community.  In  a  third  of  the  communities  that  somewhat 
intangible  quality  known  as  community  spirit  is  recognizable,  and 
is  evidenced  by  pride  in  the  home  town,  by  good  schools  and  com¬ 
munity  improvements. 

How  necessary  it  is  for  the  official  agencies  to  furnish  all  they 
reasonably  can  of  well-rounded  social  life  is  clearly  seen  when  the 
social  resources,  apart  from  those  brought  by  these  agencies,  are 
considered. 


The  Benefits  of  Education 

The  schools  of  the  South  are  sharing  in  the  new  social  spirit 
and  there  is  much  to  be  done.  The  fight  against  illiteracy  is  not 
over,  though  it  is  being  won.  Then,  too,  the  school  is  the  only 
public  building  in  which  all  the  people  of  a  community  can  meet 
for  the  discussion  of  community  projects. 

As  showing  what  the  schools  can  do,  the  system  in  Colbert 
County,  Alabama,  may  be  considered.  The  schools  in  this  county 
have  made  great  progress  during  the  last  three  years  under  the 
leadership  of  Mr.  J.  T.  McKee.  The  program  includes  not  only 
school  improvement,  but  also  community  development  through  the 
schools.  Four  years  ago  many  of  the  buildings  were  dilapidated 
and  inadequate.  The  school  term  was  less  than  half  a  year  and 
very  few  of  the  children  were  attending  high  school.  This  was 
due  chiefly  to  the  fact  that  outside  the  county  seat  and  the  city  of 
Sheffield  there  were  no  high  schools  within  reach  of  the  majority 
of  the  children  in  the  county,  and  nothing  had  been  done  to  awaken 
among  the  children  a  desire  to  go  to  high  school. 

The  first  move  of  the  superintendent  was  to  stress  the  disad¬ 
vantage  of  the  one-teacher  school.  As  a  result,  where  there  were 
thirty-seven  schools  with  one  teacher  each,  there  are  now  only 
eight.  Not  including  four  schools  which  have  only  the  primary 
grades,  there  are  forty-two  white  rural  elementary  schools  in  the 
county  with  ninety-two  teachers  and  almost  3,000  pupils.  Of  this 
number  134  are  in  grades  above  the  seventh.  The  county  high  school 
is  located  outside  of  the  city.  It  has  thirty-five  pupils  and  three 
teachers.  In  addition  to  the  superintendent  of  schools,  there  are 

36 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE 


two  supervisors,  one  of  white  and  one  of  colored  schools,  and  four 
attendance  officers. 

There  are  now  three  consolidated  schools  in  the  county,  while 
seventeen  of  the  total  number  of  schools  have  either  three  or  four 
teachers  each.  Nine  up-to-date  school  buildings  have  been  built. 
Each  school  has  been  supplied  with  a  map,  a  globe,  and  a  small 
library.  The  expenditures  for  permanent  improvements  have 
amounted  to  $75,000,  which  has  been  raised  by  a  county  tax  of 
three  mills,  with  an  additional  three-mill  tax  in  thirteen  special 
districts. 


THE  HIGH  AND  GRADED  SCHOOL,  CHAPEL  HILL,  NORTH  CAROLINA 


The  total  income  for  the  schools  of  the  county  in  the  year  pre¬ 
ceding  the  Survey  was  $78,000,  virtually  three  times  as  much  as  in 
the  school  year  1916-17  before  the  three-mill  tax  had  become  ef¬ 
fective.  Before  the  present  superintendent  took  office,  the  schools, 
almost  without  exception,  had  no  work  above  the  seventh  grade. 
Now  thirty-one  have  from  eight  to  eleven  grades,  and  nearly  every 
rural  child  can  find  at  least  some  high-school  work  within  driving 
distance.  The  supervision  of  teachers  has  increased  and  twelve 
teacher  conferences  have  been  held. 

Even  with  so  much  accomplished,  there  are  still  many  problems 
to  be  solved.  Among  these  are  the  short  school  term ;  the  low 
percentage  of  attendance,  partly  due  to  bad  roads  and  partly  to 

37 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


the  custom  of  keeping  children  at  home  for  farm  work ;  small 
salaries  for  teachers ;  and  a  tendency  among  parents  to  he  satisfied 
when  their  children  have  completed  the  elementary  grades.  In 
July,  1920,  while  20  per  cent,  of  the  children  in  Colbert’s  only  city 
or  town  had  completed  at  least  one  high-school  grade,  only  5  per 
cent,  of  the  county  children  had ;  and  this  represented,  for  the 
county  children,  a  considerable  improvement  over  the  conditions  that 
had  obtained  four  years  before.  The  superintendent  is  now  stressing 
the  idea  that  unless  a  child  goes  through  the  eleventh  grade  he  enters 
life  handicapped. 


The  Flexible  Curriculum 

The  belief  that  the  school  should  become  a  servant  to  the  com¬ 
munity  is  gaining  headway  throughout  this  region.  New  state 
laws  have  helped  progressive  communities  and  superintendents  hy 
allowing  the  inclusion  of  courses  in  hygiene  and  agriculture  in  the 
elementary  grades  and,  along  with  these  subjects,  physical  educa¬ 
tion,  manual  training,  home  economics  and  a  year  of  home  project 
work  in  the  high  school.  In  Colbert  County,  school  entertainments 
are  held  frequently;  and,  in  many  communities,  they  are  the  only 
social  events  of  the  year.  Meetings  and  club  demonstrations  are 
held  in  the  schools  in  cooperation  with  the  county  agents. 

There  is  a  County  Field  Day  and  a  County  Commencement  at 
which  blue  ribbons  are  awarded  to  the  best  school  exhibits.  These 
events  are  really  county  reunions.  From  all  over  the  county  the 
people  come  in  cars,  buggies  and  farm  wagons.  Fathers  and  mothers 
and  their  children  fill  the  school  yards ;  are  proud  of  their  own 
school  exhibit  and  interested  in  all  the  events  of  the  day.  The 
situation  in  Colbert  County  is  well  summed  up  by  the  statement 
of  two  teachers  from  Tennessee  who  were  on  the  faculty  of  a 
consolidated  school  in  the  western  part  of  the  county  where  the 
people  are  largely  tenants.  They  said,  “Out  where  we  come 
from,  people  love  their  fine  farms,  their  fine  cottages,  their 
beautiful  barns  and  farm  implements.  Here  people  do  not  have 
all  these  things,  but  they  are  interested  in  the  welfare  of  their 
children.” 

Conditions  very  like  those  existing  in  Colbert  County  before  the 
present  administration  still  prevail  in  many  counties.  The  cam¬ 
paign  for  improvement  and  consolidation  has,  however,  gained  con¬ 
siderable  headway.  Educational  programs  such  as  those  in  Colbert 
County  constitute  a  notable  achievement,  and  are  rich  in  promise 

38 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE 


for  the  educational  and  social  development  of  the  children  of  the 
rural  sections  of  this  region. 

What  the  Colleges  Are  Doing 

In  the  field  of  higher  education,  the  influence  in  the  South  of 
colleges  supported  by  religious  denominations  has  been  extremely 
important.  Though  many  of  these  colleges  are  small,  and  though 
in  the  past  some,  at  least,  did  not  maintain  very  high  academic 
standards,  these  institutions  have  trained  great  numbers  of  young 


SWIMMING  POOL  AT  BESSIE  TIFT  COLLEGE.  FORSYTH.  GEORGIA 
Paid  for  by  the  college  girls  and  the  town  cooperating 


people  for  their  life’s  work.  Evidence  of  the  important  work  done 
by  these  colleges  may  be  found  in  a  study  of  Trinity  College  in 
Durham  County,  North  Carolina,  and  of  Maryville  College  in 
Blount  County,  Tennessee.  The  inspiring  influence  of  Maryville 
College  for  over  a  hundred  years,  in  Blount  County  alone,  can 
hardly  be  estimated,  to  say  nothing  of  its  influence  in  the  wide 
range  of  country  it  has  served  beyond  the  county  lines. 

The  same  statement,  except  as  to  age,  may  be  made  for  Trinity 
College ;  and  indeed  for  many  other  institutions  of  the  same  char¬ 
acter  throughout  the  South.  Finally  we  should  consider  the  state 
universities  which  are  making  a  most  valuable  contribution  to  the 
life  of  the  rural  folk  and  to  the  entire  educational  and  economic 
development  of  the  South.  Perhaps  no  university  in  the  South  is 

89 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


doing  more  for  its  people  than  the  one  in  North  Carolina.  Its 
Extension  Department  and  its  School  of  Social  Science  reach  every¬ 
where  throughout  the  state.  Students  from  its  School  of  Public 
Welfare  have  organized  community  get-together  days,  with  ex¬ 
hibits,  games  and  addresses  on  the  possibilities  of  rural  community 
life. 

Surveys  have  been  conducted  that  have  added  to  the  sum  total 
of  social  knowledge  and  furnished  the  material  for  further  develop¬ 
ment.  Its  publications  carry  the  doctrine  of  community  better¬ 
ment  to  all  who  will  read ;  the  News  Letter  alone  reaches  more  than 
20,000  readers  every  week,  and  a  study  of  the  files  of  this  periodical 
reveals  the  story  of  pioneer  social  progress  in  a  great,  vigorous 
commonwealth.  Each  step,  big  or  little,  is  carefully  reported,  and 
one  sees  the  quiet  but  very  inspiring  influence  of  the  leaders  of  the 
state  university.  The  communities  near  Chapel  Hill,  where  the  uni¬ 
versity  is  located,  receive,  of  course,  more  attention  than  those  farther 
away. 

What  is  true  of  North  Carolina  is  true  of  many  other  state 
universities.  The  Texas  Agricultural  and  Mechanical  College,  for 
instance,  has  issued  several  bulletins  on  rural  community  organiza¬ 
tion  ;  and  members  of  its  extension  staff  are  devoting  themselves 
to  assisting  in  the  organization  of  local  communities.  The  Uni¬ 
versity  of  Tennessee  also  has  had  a  community  organization  mem¬ 
ber  cooperating  with  the  faculty  of  its  Agricultural  College.  Pea¬ 
body  School  for  Teachers  has  made  an  outstanding  contribution  in 
training  rural  teachers  and  community  leaders. 

Other  institutions  are  developing  similar  work.  The  response 
of  the  people  is  remarkable,  all  things  considered.  Of  course  there 
are  failures.  Social  progress  is  not  a  matter  of  mathematical  cer¬ 
tainty.  There  are  even  dangers  in  this  work  lest  those  who  go 
out  from  the  universities  fail  to  develop  adequate  leadership  in  the 
community  and  begin  the  evils  of  paternalism  which  rob  the  local 
people  of  all  initiative  and  ambition.  But  in  the  main  the  move¬ 
ment  is  soundly  conceived.  It  is  meeting  successfully  the  real  test 
of  approval  by  the  people  who  continue  to  support  it  by  taxes.  It 
is  one  of  the  most  helpful  developments  in  the  rural  South  to-day. 


40 


CHAPTER  IV 


The  Religious  Situation  in  General 

PROTESTANTISM  has  a  strong  hold  on  the  South.  The 
number  of  adherents  of  all  non-evangelical  faiths  is  negligible. 
They  total  only  about  2  per  cent,  of  the  entire  church  mem¬ 
bership  ;  and,  except  in  Louisiana,  are  to  be  found  almost  exclu¬ 
sively  in  the  cities.  They  form  a  group  that  has  not  increased 
rapidly.  In  the  six  counties  included  in  this  study,  the  number 
of  non-evangelical  adherents  increased  from  seven-tenths  of  one 
per  cent,  of  the  total  church  membership  in  1890  to  one  and  three- 
tenths  per  cent,  in  1916. 

In  the  South  the  proportion  of  Protestant  church  members  in 
the  total  population,  40.4  per  cent.,  is  the  highest  in  the  United 
States.  The'  South  is  predominantly  rural  and  its  churches  are, 
for  the  most  part,  country  churches.  One-half  the  rural  church 
organizations  in  America  are  in  the  southern  states.  Facts  like 
these  give  exceptional  significance  to  this  examination  of  rural 
church  life  in  the  South.  Protestant  church  membership  in  the 
South  is  significant  because  of  its  size ;  because  an  increasing  num¬ 
ber  of  rural  Christians  will  take  themselves  to  the  southern  cities 
as  the  South  expands  industrially,  just  as  many  have  already  gone 
to  northern  cities ;  because,  in  the  South,  the  Church  is  now  vir¬ 
tually  the  only  agency,  other  than  the  school,  that  reaches  every 
community  and  most  of  the  adults  in  every  community. 

What  is  the  Church  doing  with  this  opportunity?  Out  of  a 
total  white  population  of  764,581  the  churches  of  the  seventy  coun¬ 
ties  enroll  216,379  people,  or  28.3  per  cent,  of  the  population.  This 
is  a  lower  figure  than  one  would  expect  from  the  regional  average, 
yet  it  may  he  accounted  for.  Both  totals  include,  of  course,  people 
in  city  and  country  alike.  In  those  six  of  the  seventy  counties  in 
which  the  Interchurch  results  were  carefully  followed  up,  it  was 
discovered  that  while  the  urban  population  was  only  one-third 
of  the  total,  the  urban  church  membership  was  one-half  of 
the  total.  There  are  many  reasons  for  this,  most  of  which  will 
be  presented  later  in  this  study.  It  may  here  be  said  simply  that 
the  city  church  in  the  South  has  the  advantage  of  a  resident  min- 

41 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


ister  with  services  every  Sunday.  This  advantage  the  average 
country  church  does  not  enjoy. 

In  the  six  counties  the  church  membership  has  increased  two 
and  one-half  times  since  the  first  Federal  Religious  Census  of  1890, 
and  approximately  45  per  cent,  since  1906.  Church  membership 
is  therefore  increasing  more  rapidly  than  the  population,  which  in 
these  counties  in  the  last  census  period  increased  only  20.2  per  cent. 
These  last  figures,  taken  from  the  Federal  Census,  include  city 
churches  and  town  and  country  churches,  both  white  and  colored. 


BUILT  ACCORDING  TO  CLASSIC  SOUTHERN  TRADITION 
The  Presbyterian  Church  at  Tuscumbia,  Alabama 


Denominations  in  the  South 

The  extent  of  the  country  church  problem  in  the  South  may 
be  readily  grasped  by  a  glance  at  denominational  statistics.  The 
South  has  been  Baptist,  Methodist,  and  Presbyterian.  No  other 
body  has  made  a  very  deep  impression  upon  the  southern  people, 
if  we  are  to  judge  by  the  numbers  enrolled,  although  in  the  counties 
which  we  are  studying  fourteen  other  denominational  bodies  are 
at  work.  The  Methodists  and  the  Baptists  have,  however,  many 
more  than  a  majority  of  the  churches. 

Throughout  the  Old  South,  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church, 
South,  has  17,000  rural  churches,  according  to  the  Reverend  Robert 
H.  Ruff,  Secretary  of  Rural  Work  of  this  denomination.  The  last 
figures  obtained  from  the  Southern  Baptist  Convention  are  given  by 

42 


THE  RELIGIOUS  SITUATION  IN  GENERAL 


Dr.  V.  I.  Masters  in  his  book,  “The  Country  Church  in  the  South.” 
He  states  that  there  are  20,000  white  country  churches  belonging 
to  the  Southern  Baptist  Convention.  The  Presbyterian  church  in 
the  United  States  has  a  few  more  than  1,000  country  churches. 
4  he  total  membership  of  these  groups  includes  more  than  four 
million  people ;  and  the  churches  have  an  even  larger  constituency 
when  the  children  to  whom  they  minister  are  included.  The  total 
white  rural  church  membership  of  the  South  probably  does  not 
exceed  5,000,000 ;  so  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  membership 
these  seventy  counties  have  a  little  less  than  5  per  cent,  of  the  total 
church  membership. 


A  COUNTRY  CHURCH  IN  GEORGIA 

In  this  survey,  as  previously  stated,  city  churches  have  been 
excluded.  For  purposes  of  definition,  incorporated  places  with 
5,000  or  more  inhabitants  have  been  classified  as  cities.  The 
churches  studied  have  been  divided  into  three  groups,  those  of 
town,  village  and  country.  Towns  have  been  defined  as  incorporated 
centers  with  from  2,501  to  5,000  inhabitants.  Villages  include  all 
places  with  from  251  to  2,500.  Hamlets  are  places  with  popula¬ 
tions  of  250  or  less  and  open-country  communities  are  counted  as 
country.  In  these  seventy  counties  *  with  their  846  communities, 
there  are  2,415  churches,  135  of  them  located  in  towns,  519  in 
villages  and  1,761  in  the  open  country  or  in  hamlets;  a  total  of 
2,415  churches  or  one  church  to  every  319  persons.  The  six  counties 
out  of  these  seventy  have  280  churches  in  their  138  communities. 

*  The  following  chapters  discuss  the  evangelical  churches  of  the  white 
population.  A  later  chapter  will  summarize  the  Negro  situation  as  discovered 
in  three  of  the  counties. 


43 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


The  proportion  in  towns,  villages,  and  country  follows  closely  the 
proportion  for  this  Southern  area  with  the  exception  of  the  towns, 
for  only  four  of  the  churches  in  these  six  counties  are  located  in 
the  larger  centers  of  population. 

The  Abandoned  Churches 

It  is  rather  startling  to  notice,  however,  that  in  four  of  these 
six  counties  there  are  abandoned  or  inactive  churches,  of  which 


A  COUNTRY  STORE  TN  BLOUNT  COUNTY,  TENNESSEE 


thirty-two  have  entirely  given  up  their  church  organization  and  are 
dead  without  hope  of  resurrection.  Twelve  more  are  inactive;  that 
is,  they  have  had  no  services  for  a  year  or  more,  though  each  still 
has  a  paper  organization.  Thus,  for  every  seven  active  churches 
in  these  counties,  there  is  one  which  is  abandoned  or  inactive.  A 
Survey  of  one-half  the  rural  churches  of  the  Southern  Methodist 
denomination  shows  only  a  slightly  better  result.  Ten  and  two- 
tenths  per  cent,  of  the  total  number  of  churches  covered  in  their 
survey  were  found  to  be  abandoned.  With  careful  field  investiga- 

44 


THE  RELIGIOUS  SITUATION  IN  GENERAL 


tion  it  is  likely  that  this  number  would  have  been  even  larger,  as 
it  is  very  easy  to  lose  track  of  an  abandoned  church. 

This  increase  in  the  number  of  abandoned  churches,  coupled 
with  the  fact  that  many  country  churches  still  included  among  the 
living  are  without  vital  programs  or  active  organizations,  has  pro¬ 
duced  another  religious  phenomenon  of  more  than  passing  sig¬ 
nificance.  Particularly  throughout  the  poorer  sections  of  the  South 
and  among  the  less  securely  domiciled  elements  of  the  population, 
various  sects  stressing  the  eccentric  and  highly  emotional  have  multi¬ 
plied  with  great  rapidity.  Included  among  these  are  the  Holy 
Rollers  and  various  “isms”  and  “ites.”  They  thrive  where  the 
older  evangelical  churches  have  failed  adequately  to  minister  to 
the  communities  with  well-rounded  religious  programs  suited  to  the 
local  needs,  and  with  sufficient  appeal  to  command  the  enduring 
loyalty  of  the  people. 

The  denominational  drives  of  recent  years  have  had  their  counter¬ 
part  in  the  South,  as  in  the  rest  of  the  country ;  and  their  influence 
will  appear  in  any  examination  of  rural  religious  conditions.  The 
Southern  Baptists  are  devoting  very  much  more  time  and  atten¬ 
tion  than  heretofore  to  the  country  community ;  and  their  campaign 
for  funds  has  solidified  the  denomination  more  than  has  anything 
else  in  its  history.  Much  the  same  thing  can  be  said  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church,  South.  The  fact  that  in  these  times  collections 
are  difficult  does  not  affect  the  truth  of  this  statement.  The  Meth¬ 
odist  Church,  South,  for  instance,  estimates  that  for  anything  like 
an  adequate  rural  program  it  must  allot  nearly  thirty  million  dollars 
in  financial  aid  to  provide  for  salaries,  ministers  and  programs  for 
the  next  five  years.  That  the  southern  denominations  are  alert, 
and  are  thinking  in  these  large  terms,  is  a  hopeful  sign. 

The  forces  of  religion  are  face  to  face  with  a  social  interest, 
newly  born  and  still  thriving;  one  which  has  stirred  the  imagina¬ 
tion  of  southern  congregations.  This  aroused  social  conscience  is 
commanding  their  loyalty  and  their  service,  a  condition  that  is  quite 
comparable  to  a  religious  quickening.  Indeed,  the  motives  which 
are  animating  both  the  leaders  of  this  movement  and  the  students 
in  the  public-welfare  schools  at  the  state  universities  are  deeply 
religious.  The  country  church  of  the  South  must  decide  whether  it 
will  conserve  and  even  capitalize  these  spiritual  values,  or  whether 
it  will  permit  this  movement  to  divorce  itself  from  the  Church  and 
proceed  independently  as  nothing  but  a  humanitarian  effort. 


45 


CHAPTER  V 


Church  Membership 


THREE-QUARTERS  of  a  million  strong  are  the  rural  white 
dwellers  in  the  seventy  counties  selected  for  this  investiga¬ 
tion.  The  army  of  the  churches  is  nearly  one-quarter  of 
a  million ;  but  not  all  are  in  active  service.  Some  members  have 
gone  beyond  reach,  are  living  in  other  counties,  often  in  other  states. 
Still  others,  as  many  as  one  of  every  five  church  members,  form 
what  may  be  called  the  reserves.  The  net  active  membership  is 
but  two-thirds  of  the  total,  or  143,384.  This  record,  however, 
is  somewhat  better  than  that  obtained  in  a  survey  of  more  than 
5,000  Southern  Methodist  churches  which  gave  61.1  per  cent,  of  the 
members  as  active.  Furthermore,  the  membership  is  rather  strongly 
feminine.  Only  39  per  cent,  of  the  total  are  males.  It  is  encourag¬ 
ing  to  note  that  one-third  are  under  twenty-one  years  of  age;  and  in 
this  group  again  the  females  lead,  though  not  quite  so  predominantly 
as  among  those  members  who  are  over  twenty-one. 


Gain  and  Loss 

The  South  has  been  well  known  for  its  evangelistic  zeal ;  and 
the  previous  chapter  has  noted  that,  city  and  country  combined,  the 
Church  in  the  South  is  growing  more  rapidly  than  is  the  population. 
What  then  of  the  country  church?  The  membership  rolls  of  the 
six  counties  chosen  from  the  seventy  were  carefully  analyzed  with 
this  problem  in  view.  It  was  found  that  205  of  the  280  churches 
added  some  members  to  their  rolls  in  the  year  preceding  the  Survey ; 
but  that  only  106,  or  slightly  less  than  40  per  cent.,  made  a  net  gain. 
The  total  gross  gain  of  all  these  churches  was  2,307  and  the  loss 
813.  The  net  gain,  therefore,  was  almost  1,500,  or  9  per  cent,  of 
the  net  active  membership. 

The  largest  accessions  to  membership,  1,742,  came  through  evan¬ 
gelistic  meetings,  of  which  211  were  held  during  the  year  preceding 
the  Survey.  Not  all  of  these,  however,  produced  converts.  An 
analysis  of  the  records  as  ^mushed  by  the  churches  shows  that 
about  15  per  cent,  of  the  meetings  were  without  any  result  which 
affected  the  membership  roll.  The  churches  report  only  1,628  as 

46 


CHURCH  MEMBERSHIP 


coming  by  confession  of  faith.  The  remainder  of  the  gross  gain, 
or  679,  was  hy  letter  of  transfer.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  quite 
a  number  of  converts  were  former  Christians  who  had  ceased  to 
hold  an  active  membership  in  any  given  church  and  whose  interest 
was  reawakened  by  means  of  the  revival  service. 

The  Sunday  School  Source 


The  Sunday  school  records  show  that  over  1,000  people  were 
brought  into  church  membership  on  confession  of  faith;  and  it  is 
reasonable  to  suppose,  therefore,  that  the  majority  of  the  converts 


A  POPULAR  ALL  DAY  SERVICE 


in  the  evangelistic  meetings  were  Sunday  school  scholars  who  had 
arrived  at  the  age  when  they  might  be  expected  to  join  the  Church. 
The  net  return  of  these  meetings  was  eight  per  church.  The  com¬ 
paratively  small  number  of  people  above  Sunday  school  age  who 
joined  the  Church  through  these  meetings  seems  to  indicate  that 
the  evangelistic  method,  though  important,  should  be  supplemented 
by  a  consistent,  all-year-round  program.  The  results  indicate  that 
there  should  be  a  very  much  more  intensive  cultivation  of  the  con¬ 
stituency  of  the  Church  in  order  to  bring  to  it  a  far  larger  propor¬ 
tion  of  the  population  than  it  now  holds  in  membership. 

Results  of  the  more  carefully  planned  of  these  evangelistic  cam¬ 
paigns  indicate  the  importance  of  intensive  cultivation.  This 
strategy  is  to  be  urged  because  of  the  large  percentage  of  inactive 
members  in  these  churches,  a  far  greater  percentage  than  is  found 

47 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


in  any  other  region  of  the  country.  Dr.  Victor  I.  Masters,  in  his 
book,  “The  Country  Church  in  the  South,”  says  that  for  every  100 
members  of  Baptist  country  churches  received  during  a  twenty 
year  period,  fifteen  died  and  thirty-seven  were  lost  by  becoming 
inactive  or  through  the  death  of  the  churches  to  which  they  be¬ 
longed.  Coupled  with  the  great  evangelistic  activity  for  which  the 
South  is  noted,  there  seems  also  to  be  a  general  neglect  of  the  new 
convert,  a  failure  to  nurture  the  implanted  life  by  adequate  re¬ 
ligious  education,  worship,  and  service. 

The  Tenant  Farmer  Problem 

The  very  evident  failure  of  the  Church  to  reach  a  considerable 
part  of  the  population  raises  a  question  whether  there  are  any 
groups  that  are  notably  out  of  sympathy  with  religion  as  represented 
in  the  country  church.  It  has  been  found  that  in  the  seventy  coun¬ 
ties  white  tenant  farmers  comprise  38.5  per  cent,  of  the  total  farm- 
operating  group,  and  only  26.5  per  cent,  of  the  total  number  of 
farmers  belong  to  churches.  If  the  churches  were  to  reach  the 
tenant  farmer  as  they  now  reach  the  farm  owner,  4,000  families,  or 
more  than  10,000  new  members,  would  be  enrolled  in  these  coun¬ 
ties.* 

In  only  eight  of  the  seventy  counties  does  the  percentage  of 
tenant  farmers  in  the  church  membership  equal  or  exceed  the  per¬ 
centage  of  tenant  farmers  in  the  farm-operating  group.  When  one 
considers  the  extent  of  tenancy  in  the  South,  one  sees  how  impor¬ 
tant  it  is,  not  only  in  respect  to  membership,  but  in  its  bearing  on 
the  potential  influence  of  the  church  in  the  community.  In  some  of 
the  counties  the  showing  is  quite  remarkable ;  and,  at  the  same  time, 
very  saddening.  In  several  counties,  more  than  one-half  the  farms 
are  operated  by  tenants ;  yet  the  proportion  of  tenant  farmers  on 
the  church  rolls  is  less  than  one-fifth.  Thus  a  forward  evangelistic 
campaign  among  the  tenant  farmers  should  engage  the  combined 
resources  of  the  Protestant  Church  in  the  South. 

*A  rather  extensive  study  of  this  subject  has  been  made  by  Professor 
L.  G.  Wilson  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina,  and  published  in  his 
“The  Church  and  the  Landless  Men.”  Professor  Wilson  shows  a  marked 
decline  in  the  Church  wherever  there  is  excessive  white  farm  tenancy.  Ten¬ 
ancy  and  white  illiteracy  with  their  very  low  ratios  of  church  membership 
go  hand  in  hand  in  the  twenty-one  tobacco  and  cotton  counties  of  North 
Carolina.  In  these  twenty-one  counties  are  found  more  than  26.5  per  cent,  of 
the  entire  non-churched  group  in  the  State,  though  the  population  of  these 
counties  is  considerably  less  than  this  proportion.  In  eight  of  the  counties 
half  of  the  people  of  responsible  age  are  outside  the  Church  ;  in  one  county 
the  church  members  form  only  4  per  cent,  of  the  population. 

48 


CHURCH  MEMBERSHIP 


Resident  Pastors  and  Membership 

Another  factor  determining  gain  or  loss  in  church  membership 
is  the  uneven  degree  to  which  the  South  is  evangelized.  The  pro¬ 
portion  of  the  rural  population  in  the  church  membership  ranges,  in 
the  seventy  counties  studied,  from  9.7  per  cent,  to  57.5  per  cent. 
Within  these  basic  counties  there  are  wide  variations  from  the  com¬ 
munity  standard.  One  community  out  of  every  ten  has  slightly  less 
than  10  per  cent,  of  its  population  enrolled  in  the  Church  ;  in  one- 
fifth  of  the  communities,  church  members  form  from  10  to  24  per 
cent.;  in  another  one-fifth,  they  constitute  from  25  per  cent,  to  33.3 


A  RURAL  PARISHIONER’S  HOME  IN  ALABAMA 


per  cent. ;  in  about  one-half,  the  membership  is  over  35  per  cent,  of 
the  population.  This  unequal  distribution  becomes  the  more  sig¬ 
nificant  when  it  is  remembered  that  so  few  of  these  counties  have 
any  foreign-born  or  Roman  Catholic  population. 

One  very  evident  point  of  weakness  in  the  present  situation  is 
the  failure  of  the  Protestant  Church  to  maintain  its  ministry  in  the 
more  inaccessible  parts  of  the  South.  In  these  districts  there  is,  of 
course,  great  poverty ;  and  the  local  people  cannot  give  as  much 
as  they  could  if  the  soil  were  more  fertile.  The  proportion  of  total 
church  membership  to  population  in  all  these  counties  is  31.5  per 
cent. ;  but  in  sixteen  southern  mountain  counties  the  membership  is 
only  a  little  more  than  one-eighth  of  the  population.  In  ten  of 
these  sixteen  it  is  25  per  cent,  or  less;  whereas  of  the  fifty-four 
non-mountain  counties,  there  are  only  eleven  in  which  the  church 

49 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


members  make  up  no  more  than  25  per  cent,  of  the  population  or 
less.  Similar  data  are  to  be  found  in  the  variations  in  active  mem¬ 
bership  between  town,  village  and  country  churches.  Of  the  town 
members  73  per  cent,  are  classed  as  active.  Of  the  village  members 
70.6  per  cent,  are  active,  as  compared  with  63.3  per  cent,  of  those 
in  the  country. 

A  great  deal  of  this  loss  may  be  traced  to  the  infrequency  of  the 
preaching  services  which,  in  the  rural  churches  of  the  South,  are 
so  commonly  held  monthly  or  bi-monthly.  Yet  such  a  meager  pro¬ 
gram  was  the  only  one  by  which  the  southern  church  could  reach 
its  rural  population.  The  social  and  economic  history  of  this  region 
explains  the  prevailing  system.  If,  over  night,  every  southern 
church  planned  at  least  one  service  on  a  Sunday,  there  would  not  be 
enough  ministers  to  fill  the  pulpits.  All  this  is  true  of  the  present. 
It  is  time,  however,  to  consider  the  consequences.  Almost  without 
exception,  southern  town  churches,  with  their  higher  proportion  of 
active  members,  have  at  least  one  service  a  Sunday. 

Over  one-half  the  village  churches  are  closed  at  least  one  Sunday 
a  month ;  while  of  the  country  churches  fewer  than  one-half  of  one 
per  cent,  have  the  full  time  of  a  minister,  and  less  than  10  per  cent, 
have  at  least  one  service  on  a  Sunday.  The  common  experience  of 
Protestant,  Catholic  and  Hebrew  has  long  shown  that  religious  life 
can  be  developed  and  sustained  only  on  the  weekly  service  basis, 
which,  moreover,  carries  out  the  tradition  of  the  divine  command. 
Four  out  of  every  five  churches  studied  in  this  survey  are  guilty 
of  breaking  this  command.  The  survey  of  8,000  South  Methodist 
churches  showed  that  from  61.6  per  cent,  to  85.1  per  cent,  of  them 
were  closed  on  any  given  Sunday  according  to  the  service  schedule. 

Size  and  Distribution  of  Churches 

Another  possible  explanation  of  the  failure  of  the  Church  to 
reach  a  greater  proportion  of  the  people  lies  in  the  fact  that  the 
country  church  is  small.  In  seventy  counties  there  is  one  church 
for  every  460  men,  women  and  children ;  but  in  a  number  of  the 
counties  there  is  one  church  for  every  250  or  fewer.  In  fact  there 
is,  in  one  case,  a  church  for  every  143  people.  Naturally,  therefore, 
the  churches  are  small.  Because  they  are  small  they  cannot  sustain 
a  preaching  service  more  than  once  or  twice  a  month.  Because  they 
have  this  service  only  once  or  twice  a  month,  they  remain  small. 
This  is  the  vicious  circle  that  militates  against  more  rapid  progress 
among  the  country  churches  of  the  South. 

50 


CHURCH  MEMBERSHIP 


This  situation  makes  for  what  is  called  overchurching.  There 
are,  among  the  different  denominational  groups,  too  few  people  to 
provide  adequate  backing  for  aggressive  programs.  But  over¬ 
churching  in  the  South  has  about  it  something  of  the  unusual  in 
that  competition  between  churches  in  an  average  community  there 
is  confined  to  fewer  denominations  than  would  be  the  case  in  some 
other  parts  of  the  country.  There  are  too  many  instances  of  church 
competition  within  the  same  denomination  whose  churches  struggle 
in  communities  too  small  to  maintain  them.  However,  with  the 
southern  tradition  of  a  preaching  service  once  or  twice  a  month,  due 
to  an  economic  inability  to  support  a  resident  pastor  and  a  large, 
going  church  enterprise,  overchurching  is  not  the  great  handicap  it 
might  otherwise  be. 

If,  however,  it  should  be  possible  in  a  number  of  communities  to 
consolidate  churches,  especially  of  the  same  denomination,  there  is 
no  doubt  that,  with  adequate  education,  a  program  of  evangeliza¬ 
tion,  worship  and  service  could  be  worked  out  under  resident  leader¬ 
ship  which  might  become  self-supporting  and  greatly  increase  evan¬ 
gelization  in  those  communities.  This  is  something  to  look  forward 
to,  and  something  which  population  movements  are  forcing  upon 
the  southern  church. 

The  small  villages  have  been  the  first  to  evidence  this  tendency. 
In  many  instances  they  have  come  to  desire,  or  are  already  sup¬ 
porting,  a  full-time,  resident  pastor.  If  this  movement  continues, 
as  seems  likely,  church  administrators  may  make  the  old  circuits 
more  compact,  recruit  ministers  for  the  new  policy,  and  richly  serve 
the  South  in  its  own  spiritual  tradition. 

A  final  feature  which  seems  to  condition  gain  and  loss  in  church 
membership,  also  relates  to  the  size  of  the  church.  The  larger 
churches  incline  not  only  to  gain  more  members  per  church  but  to 
make  better  proportional  gains  than  smaller  churches,  both  on  the 
one-year  basis  and  on  the  basis  of  a  ten-year  study.  The  churches 
in  the  six  selected  counties  for  which  there  are  accurate  records 
showed  this  to  be  the  case. 

GAINS  IN  MEMBERSHIP  BY  SIZE  OF  CONGREGATIONS 

One  Year  Period 


Size  of  Number  of  Percentage  Number  Percentage 

Church  Churches  of  Total  Gaining 

0-25  . .  30  10.7  7  23 

26-50  .  58  20.7  29  50 

51-100  .  97  34.6  57  59 

over  100  .  95  34.0  73  77 


280  100.0  166  59 


51 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


MAP  OF  COMMUNITIES  AND  PARISHES  IN  COLBERT  COUNTY,  ALABAMA 


52 


CHURCH  MEMBERSHIP 


— - County  Boundary 

- - — -  Community  Boundary 

“  w  “  “ ••“Neighborhood  Boundary 
Parish  Boundary 

- Parish  &  Church  Connecting  Line 

- Circuit  of  Pastor 


KEY  and  SYMBOLS 

•  Hamlet 
®  Villages 

Town  -  over  5.000 
□  Church  -White 
0  Church  -Colored 

C?)  Church -White  with  Pastor's  Residence 
c!)  Church -Colered. with  Pastor's  Residence 


Circuit 

A  Pastor’s  Residence  without  Church-Ifhite 
4  Pastors  Residence  without  Church -Colored 
S3  Abandoned  Church.  3  Inactive  Church 
®  Sunday  School  without  Church  -White 
®  Sunday  School  without  Church  -  Colored 
Church  using  School  Bldg. 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


CHURCHES  AND  CIRCUITS  IN  ORANGE  COUNTY,  NORTH  CAROLINA 


54 


CHURCH  MEMBERSHIP 


Ten  Year  Period 


Size  of  Number  of  Percentage  Number  Percentage 

Church  Churches  of  Total  Gaining 

0-25  .  16  7  5  31.3 

26-50  .  41  18  11  26.8 

51-100  .  80  38  48  60.0 

over  100  .  77  37'  62  80.5 


214  100  126  58.8 

The  Southern  Methodist  Survey  showed  very  much  the  same  situa¬ 
tion.  This  study  covered  5,300  churches.  Of  those  with  fewer 
than  twenty-five  members  each,  41  per  cent,  were  increasing ;  in  the 
group  with  the  membership  between  twenty-six  and  fifty,  54.5  per 
cent.,  and  in  the  group  between  fifty-one  and  one  hundred,  63  per 
cent,  showed  an  increase;  in  the  group  with  100  to  149  members  an 
even  80  per  cent,  were  forging  ahead  ;  while,  among  those  congrega¬ 
tions  with  more  than  150  members,  90.1  per  cent,  were  increasing. 

Church  Parishes 

Maps  showing  the  church  and  community  boundaries  for  three 
of  the  six  counties  illustrate  the  methods  used.  The  parish  boun¬ 
daries  have  been  drawn  to  show  the  average  area  covered  by  the 
Church.  In  many  counties  in  which  the  roads  are  good,  and  where 
the  communities  are  not  only  heavily  populated  but  close  together, 
church  parish  boundaries  are  difficult  to  determine  because  the  per¬ 
sonal  choice  of  the  people  largely  enters  into  their  selection  of  a 
church.  Within  the  good-road  area  of  the  counties  the  majority 
of  the  people  can  reach  more  than  one  Protestant  church  of  their 
own  denomination  in  less  time  than  the  average  church  member 
in  a  large  city  can  get  to  his  downtown  church.  The  parish  bound¬ 
aries,  therefore,  have  been  drawn  to  show  the  average  area  cov¬ 
ered  by  a  church,  and  exceptional  cases  have  been  eliminated  as  far 
as  possible.  The  procedure  used  was  to  follow  down  each  road 
leading  to  the  church  and  locate  the  home  of  the  last  regular  at¬ 
tendant  living  within  a  reasonable  distance.  The  outside  points  on 
each  road  were  then  connected  by  straight  lines. 

The  maps  show  typical  conditions.  They  show  how  pastors  are 
concentrated  in  the  county-seat  town  or  in  the  larger  centers  of 
population ;  they  also  show  the  unevangelized  areas.  In  the  study 
of  the  seventy  counties,  it  was  discovered  that  one  community  in 
every  seven  did  not  have  a  church.  This  was  the  situation,  how- 

55 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


ever,  in  only  half  of  the  counties.  This  half  included  almost  all 
those  located  in  the  southern  mountain  region,  though  several  were 
in  Florida.  The  remaining  communities  were  scattered  throughout 
the  rest  of  the  counties. 


56 


CHAPTER  VI 


Shepherds  of  the  Flock 

SUBSEQUENT  chapters  will  show  that  the  program  of  the 
Church  in  the  South  is  primarily  a  preaching  program.  Very 
little  else  is  attempted.  Buildings  are  erected  chiefly  to  provide 
auditorium  space  for  the  congregations.  But  improvement  in  the 
geneial  situation  of  religion  in  the  rural  South  must  come  by  way 
of  the  minister. 


A  MOUNTAIN  CHURCH  IN  TENNESSEE 


The  2,415  churches  studied  are  served  by  1,357  ministers,  an 
average  of  one  minister  to  every  one  and  three-quarters  churches. 
Even  this  average  is  better  than  one  might  expect  who  had  heard 
tales  of  the  exceedingly  large  circuits  served  by  the  southern  min¬ 
ister.  It  should  be  recalled,  however,  that  many  of  the  ministers 
are  men  engaged  in  other  occupations  by  which  they  eke  out  a  mere 
pittance ;  these  are  the  so-called  “toiler-preachers”  who  are  expected 
to  devote  no  more  than  the  Sunday  to  the  work  of  the  church,  and 
who  generally  receive  only  a  nominal  compensation  for  their  work. 
Such  a  man,  as  a  rule,  serves  only  one  congregation.  Ministers 

57 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


giving  their  full  time  to  their  profession  serve  on  the  average  some¬ 
what  more  than  two  congregations  each. 


The  Circuit  Rider 

In  the  South,  more  than  in  any  other  part  of  the  United  States, 
the  pioneer  tradition  of  the  non-resident  minister  has  persisted.  The 


. 


mm 


rnmmm 


TWO  LOCAL  PREACHERS  IN  ALABAMA 

circuit  rider  is  made  responsible  for  the  care  of  a  number  of  preach¬ 
ing  points,  and  travels  from  one  to  another,  visiting  each  but  once 
or  twice  a  month  and  staying  only  long  enough  to  preach  a  sermon 
and,  now  and  then,  to  conduct  a  Sunday  school.  In  certain  of  the 
less-favored  agricultural  areas  the  minister  is  not  even  available  for 
funerals,  but  funeral  services  are  held  at  infrequent  intervals  for 
all  who  have  died  since  the  last  pastoral  visit. 

Full-time  resident  ministers  serve  barely  20  per  cent,  of  the 

58 


SHEPHERDS  OF  THE  FLOCK 


Ministers  live  outside  the  County 


9  l  ?  ?  t 

-Scale  of  Miles 


DURHAM  COUNTY,  NORTH  CAROLINA 


59 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


churches  in  the  seventy  counties  surveyed.  Almost  as  many  of  the 
ministers  of  the  South  serve  two  churches ;  22  per  cent,  serve  three 
churches ;  38  per  cent,  have  four  or  more,  which  often  means  five, 
six,  or  even  twelve  churches.  The  surprising  thing  in  these  situa¬ 
tions  is  the  size  of  some  of  the  churches  on  these  circuits.  Their 
memberships  are  often  more  than  a  hundred  and  not  infrequently 
exceed  two  hundred. 

But  the  long  habit  of  the  South  must  be  remembered  in  this  con¬ 
nection.  All  denominations  are  working  to  reduce  circuits ;  and 
progress  is  being  made  as  more  men  are  available  and  the  people 
come  to  see  the  advantage  of  having  a  resident  pastor.  The  eco¬ 
nomic  situation  has  also  had  an  influence.  With  the  low  income 
that  was  the  lot  of  the  southern  farmer  for  a  generation  or  more 
after  the  Civil  War,  the  support  of  a  full-time  pastor  was  not  so 
feasible  as  in  the  rest  of  the  country.  But  conditions  have  improved. 
Of  the  town  churches  46  per  cent,  have  the  full  time  of  a  resident 
minister  and  an  additional  19  per  cent,  have  a  part-time  resident. 
For  the  village  churches  the  figures  are  15  and  34  per  cent,  respec¬ 
tively;  but  of  the  country  churches  only  seven  out  of  1,761  have 
full-time  resident  ministers.  Nine  per  cent,  have  part-time  resident 
pastors. 

The  Absentee  Pastor 

Only  7  per  cent,  of  the  churches  in  the  six  basic  counties  have 
the  two  preaching  services  a  Sunday  which  are  customary  in  many 
other  places ;  and  only  9  per  cent,  more  have  one  service  each 
Sunday.  Four-fifths  of  the  churches  have  either  one  or  two  services 
a  month,  while  3  per  cent,  have  services  less  frequently  than  once 
a  month.  In  1915,  according  to  “The  Country  Church  in  the  South” 
by  Dr.  Victor  I.  Masters,  there  were  36,500  country  churches  in 
the  southern  states ;  and  of  these  80  per  cent,  were  served  by  ab¬ 
sentee  pastors,  and  90  per  cent,  had  preaching  only  once  a  month. 
In  other  words,  on  any  given  Sunday  virtually  27,000  country 
churches  in  the  South  are  closed.  “It  is  only  by  courtesy  that  we 
may  speak  of  these  absentee  preachers  as  a  ‘pastor’  in  the  New 
Testament  sense  of  that  term.  As  a  shepherd  of  the  flock  he  is 
an  absolute  nonentity,’’  says  Dr.  Masters,  who  condemns  the  whole 
system  in  sweeping  terms. 

The  South  must  learn  that  the  absentee  minister  is  a  type  of 
the  past.  He  is  less  efficient  than  the  man  who  is  on  the  job  day 
in  and  day  out,  and  who  shares  all  the  community  interests  and 

60 


SHEPHERDS  OF  THE  FLOCK 


activities.  The  resident  minister  is  interested  in  the  community’s 
schools  because  his  children  attend  them ;  is  zealous  for  clean  recrea¬ 
tion  because  he  wants  them  and  their  young  friends  to  have  it.  As  a 
resident,  he  is  available  with  spiritual  solace  in  times  of  bereave¬ 
ment  or  distress.  Of  the  138  communities  in  these  counties  only 
twenty-eight  have  resident  ministers,  while  110  are  pastorless. 

Examples  of  this  situation  will  point  the  evil.  In  Durham 
County  only  two  ministers  live  in  the  288  square  miles  outside 
the  city  in  which  there  are  thirty-four  churches.  One  serves  six 
different  points,  while  the  other  does  not  live  in  his  parish,  but  five 
miles  away.  The  remaining  twenty-seven  churches  are  served  by 
seventeen  preachers,  of  whom  six  live  in  the  city  of  Durham  and 
eleven  outside  the  county.  Blount  County,  which  includes  one  sec¬ 
tion  with  an  area  of  nearly  300  square  miles  and  a  population  of 
6,709,  has  forty  churches,  none  of  which  has  a  resident  minister. 

Some  of  these  ministers  travel  as  far  as  fifty  miles  to  reach 
their  appointments.  One  out  of  every  four  churches  has  a  min¬ 
ister  who  lives  more  than  ten  miles  distant.  In  a  number  of  cases, 
as  will  be  noted  on  the  parish  map,  the  minister  lives  outside  the 
county  in  which  his  church  is  located ;  while  there  are  ministers 
living  in  the  six  counties  who  serve  fifty-nine  churches  lying  outside 
the  counties  in  which  they  reside.  With  such  conditions  obtaining 
it  was  not  surprising  to  find  that  one-tenth  of  the  churches  were 
pastorless  at  the  time  of  the  Survey. 

It  has  been  stated  that  spiritually  and  materially  the  full-time 
resident  pastor  is  a  paying  proposition.  And  it  is  interesting  to 
note  that  of  the  churches  served  by  full-time  resident  ministers, 
78  per  cent,  registered  a  net  gain  in  the  last  decade  as  well  as  dur¬ 
ing  the  year  preceding  the  Survey. 

The  Rewards  of  a  Full-Time  Pastor 

Of  those  churches  without  full-time,  resident  pastors  only  52  per 
cent,  gained  in  membership  last  year,  while  in  the  last  decade  only 
41  per  cent,  showed  an  actual  increase.  The  difference,  however,  as 
between  78  per  cent,  and  41  per  cent,  is  not  nearly  so  significant  as 
is  the  amount  of  gain;  for  the  average  net  increase  in  church  mem¬ 
bership  of  those  congregations  with  resident  ministers  was  50  per 
cent,  greater  than  the  increase  of  those  congregations  with  non¬ 
resident  ministers. 

A  resident  minister  also  has  a  very  real  effect  upon  church 
finance.  In  the  town  and  village  churches,  the  per  capita  contribu- 

61 


THE  PRESBYTERIAN  CHURCH,  CHAPEL  HILL,  NORTH  CAROLINA 

For  all  the  churches  of  the  six  counties,  those  of  town,  village 
and  open  country,  the  average  per  capita  contribution  of  the  con¬ 
gregations  with  full-time  resident  ministers  was  $18.24;  of  those 
with  part-time  resident  ministers,  $15.71  ;  while  for  churches  with 
non-resident  ministers  the  amount  fell  to  $8.00  per  member.  In 
every  county  the  figures  favor  the  resident  minister. 

The  Colbert  County  town  and  village  churches,  with  an  average 
of  nearly  $25  per  active  member  where  there  was  a  resident  pastor, 

62 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


tion  in  those  congregations  with  resident  ministers  was  $17.88  an¬ 
nually  ;  while  in  churches  with  non-resident  ministers  the  average 
contribution  per  member  was  $9.05  a  year.  In  the  open  country 
the  difference  was  almost  as  striking :  the  churches  with  resident 
ministers  averaged  $11.57  per  member  as  against  $7.23  per  member 
for  churches  with  non-resident  leadership. 


SHEPHERDS  OF  THE  FLOCK 


and  those  of  Durham,  with  an  average  of  nearly  $23  per  member, 
show  also  that  there  is  no  economic  reason  why  an  average-sized 
congregation  in  the  South  should  not  avail  itself  of  the  full  time  of 
a  trained  man. 

The  resident  minister  almost  always  means  a  well-organized  and 
up-to-date  Sunday  school,  as  well  as  better  equipment  and  increased 
influence  for  the  Church  in  community  affairs.  Though  the  organ¬ 
izations  are  few,  even  for  women,  in  the  southern  country  churches, 
and  though  the  program  is  meager,  what  work  there  is  along  these 
lines  is  largely  in  the  churches  with  resident  ministers.  Still  other 
factors  indicate  the  desirability  of  a  larger  measure  of  pastoral 
care  for  southern  country  churches,  and  will  be  considered  in  the 
chapter  on  church  membership.  Furthermore,  it  is  to  the  advan¬ 
tage  of  the  pastor  to  serve  but  one  church  or,  at  the  most,  two. 
Not  only  can  he  do  more  lasting  work,  but  he  is  better  paid.  The 
salary  most  frequently  paid  to  ministers  serving  one  church  is 
exactly  100  per  cent,  higher  in  these  seventy  counties  than  that  of 
the  minister  serving  two  or  more  churches. 

Educating  the  Pastor 

Of  recent  years  the  broader  training  of  ministers  has  been 
receiving  widespread  attention  in  the  Protestant  Church.  In  re¬ 
sponse  to  this  need  throughout  the  country  both  secular  and  de¬ 
nominational  colleges  and  seminaries  are  offering,  during  the  summer 
semester,  post-graduate  and  extension  courses  for  the  country  min¬ 
isters.  Among  other  denominations  the  Methodist  Episcopal, 
South,  has  embarked  upon  a  progressive  educational  policy  that 
provides  more  than  a  dozen  schools  for  its  pastors  who  have  not 
had  the  advantages  of  college  or  seminary  training.  This  service 
has  reached  about  1,000  rural  pastors,  and  includes  a  correspond¬ 
ence  course  for  those  unable  to  attend  the  summer  course  at  one 
of  the  institutions. 

This  is  a  masterly  effort  to  solve  an  urgent  problem ;  for,  as  a 
rule,  the  services  of  a  man  of  college  training  are  at  a  premium.  He 
is  called  to  the  largest  church,  and  his  church  invariably  registers 
the  greatest  advances  in  work,  membership,  and  finance.  “To  him 
that  hath  shall  be  given.’’  From  this  point  of  view  it  is  interesting 
to  notice  the  leadership  of  the  churches  in  these  counties.  Seven  out 
of  every  ten  of  the  ministers  have  had  no  college  or  seminary  train¬ 
ing.  Only  11  per  cent,  have  had  both,  and  about  one  out  of  every 
five  has  had  some  college  work.  The  average  country  minister  in 

63 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


the  South  has  to  his  credit  sixteen  years  of  arduous  service;  but 
this  period  represents  service  in  about  eight  different  pastorates. 
Barely  has  he  become  acquainted  with  his  congregation  and  put 
a  program  into  effect  when  he  is  ready  to  move  elsewhere. 

In  the  Southern  Methodist  Church  the  average  pastor  has  had 
13.2  years  of  experience  ;  but  his  average  stay  in  each  charge  has 
been  only  twTo  years.  This  is  a  considerable  handicap.  The  min¬ 
ister  should  take  time  to  get  acquainted  with  his  people,  to  under¬ 
stand  their  spiritual  life,  and  to  win  their  confidence  before  he  can 
serve  them  to  his  best  ability.  Otherwise  they  fail  to  repose  com¬ 
plete  confidence  in  him.  In  our  six  basic  counties  only  twenty 
churches  have  retained  their  present  pastors  through  the  last  dec¬ 
ade,  a  little  more  than  twice  that  number  have  made  two  changes. 
Ninety-six  churches  divided  almost  equally  the  services  of  three  or 
four  ministers  during  the  last  ten  years.  Thirty-nine  have  listened 
to  five  different  preachers  each,  six  to  twenty  each,  seven  to  eight 
each ;  eight  churches  have  each  seen  ten  men  come  and  go,  while 
the  remainder  have  had  bowing  acquaintance  with  one  or  more 
ministers  per  year.  Thus,  more  than  three  churches  out  of  every 
four  have  retained  their  ministers  only  three  years  or  less ;  and  over 
half  have  had  an  average  pastorate  of  two  years  or  less,  allowing 
for  the  time  the  pulpit  was  vacant  between  pastorates. 

The  Laborer  and  His  Hire 

One  reason  for  these  ministerial  migrations  lies  in  the  custom 
which  obtains  in  one  of  the  two  largest  denominations  of  the  South 
and  in  several  of  its  smaller  bodies :  the  pastors  are  changed  every 
few  years.  Another  reason,  however,  may  lie  in  the  inadequate 
salaries.  The  exact  situation  in  the  seventy  counties,  of  ministers 
giving  their  full  time  to  religious  work,  is  shown  in  the  following 
table : 

With  No  Other 
Occupation 


Serving 

Serving 

One 

Two  or  More 

Salary  Received  by  Minister 

Point 

Points 

No  salary . 

.  20 

53 

$500  or  less  . 

.  30 

46 

$501  to  $750  . 

.  4 

35 

$751  to  $1,000  . 

.  16 

84 

$1,001  to  $1,250  . 

.  28 

90 

$1,251  to  $1,500  . 

.  29 

64 

$1,501  to  $1,750  . 

.  25 

61 

$1,751  to  $2,000  . 

.  8 

36 

$2,001  to  $2,500  . 

.  37 

21 

Over  $2,500  . 

.  12 

5 

64 


SHEPHERDS  OF  THE  FLOCK 


These  figures  include  $250  added  to  the  cash  salary  as  the  estimated 
rental  value  of  the  parsonage  whenever  it  has  been  furnished  to 
the  minister.  It  will  be  seen  that  some  of  the  churches  are  begin¬ 
ning  to  pay  an  adequate  wage  in  return  for  the  best  efforts  of  a 
pastor  and  are  therefore  attaining  adequate  results. 

There  are  only  630  parsonages  in  the  seventy  counties,  and  even 
some  of  these  are  not  occupied,  as  ministers  prefer  to  live  in  the 
county  seat  both  because  of  its  greater  advantages  and  because  of 
its  convenient  location  for  reaching  a  larger  number  of  their  con¬ 
gregations.  Too  often  the  minister  does  not  cast  his  lot  with  his 
people  as  does  the  missionary  on  the  foreign  field.  Whether  this 
is  the  fault  of  the  minister  or  of  the  congregation  or  of  the  system 
cannot  be  determined.  Thus  464,  or  54  per  cent,  of  the  communi¬ 
ties,  are  without  resident  ministers,  while  nearly  80  per  cent,  have 
no  minister  who  gives  his  full  time  to  the  cause  of  Christ  in  the 
community. 

There  is  a  disturbingly  large  number  of  ministers  who  have 
other  occupations.  In  fact  48.1  per  cent,  of  the  ministers  in  the 
seventy  counties  depend  on  farming,  teaching,  or  business  for  part 
of  their  income.  Two-fifths  of  these  ministers  confine  their  services 
to  just  one  church;  and  another  fifth  have  only  two  churches.  The 
rest  have  three  or  more  churches.  The  church  with  a  minister 
engaged  in  another  occupation  besides  that  of  the  ministry  is,  how¬ 
ever,  no  better  off  than  one  that  has  to  share  its  leader  with  other 
congregations.  No  other  region  has  so  many  ministers  with  other 
occupations  as  has  the  South.  Except  for  the  Southwest,  largely 
churched  by  southern  bodies,  there  is  no  other  region  in  which  more 
than  15  per  cent,  of  the  ministers  are  engaged  in  other  occupations. 

Nearly  all  of  the  ministers  in  the  seventy  counties,  except  some 
in  town  or  village,  are  compelled  to  use  some  form  of  conveyance. 
Almost  all  of  them  must  furnish  their  own  conveyances  and  pay 
for  the  upkeep.  The  churches  of  the  South,  indeed  all  circuit 
churches,  demand  that  the  minister  be  an  itinerant — a  sort  of  trav¬ 
eling  salesman  of  sermons.  But  unlike  the  salesman  for  a  com¬ 
mercial  house,  he  does  not  have  his  traveling  expenses  paid.  One 
denomination  in  the  South  has  discovered  that  for  2,000  ministers 
whose  work  necessitated  travel,  the  annual  transportation  bill  was 
nearly  $400,000.  Seventy  per  cent,  of  these  ministers  use  automo¬ 
biles,  20  per  cent,  of  them  use  horses,  and  the  others  use  the  rail¬ 
road.  The  average  transportation  expense  was  $223,  $146  and  $88 
respectively  for  these  three  groups — surely  a  heavy  drain  on  the 
slender  income  of  the  pastor. 


6r> 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


The  ministers  and  church  members  in  the  six  basic  counties  are 
fully  aware  that  the  churches  are  facing  very  grave  problems.  The 
most  frequent  complaint  of  the  church  members  is  of  a  lack  of 
leadership  on  the  part  of  ministers.  Pastors,  on  the  other  hand, 
complain  of  indifference  and  lack  of  leadership  among  their 
local  workers.  Ministers  and  laymen  alike  are  aware  that 
under  the  itinerant  plan  there  is  no  time  to  develop  leader¬ 
ship,  no  opportunity  to  relate  religion  to  life,  and  no  possibility 
to  make  the  Church  felt  as  a  dominating  influence  in  the  local 
community.  They  all  admit  that  in  a  state-wide  movement,  such 
as  the  prohibition  campaign,  which  touched  the  emotional  convic- 


BIRTHPLACE  OF  HELEN  KELLER,  TUSCUMBIA,  ALABAMA 


tions  of  the  people,  the  Church  was  a  considerable  factor.  Sec¬ 
tarian  differences  which  divide  communities  and  hamper  community 
spirit,  overchurching,  small  memberships,  illiteracy  and  the  shifting 
of  population  have  been  mentioned  as  handicaps. 

Despite  these  handicaps,  however,  the  general  attitude  of  the 
people  is  optimistic.  .When  asked  as  to  the  outlook  for  the  future, 
twenty-nine  churches  reported  it  very  good  and  sixty-two  thought 
it  good,  making  approximately  one-third  of  the  churches  surveyed 
confident  of  their  future.  Nearly  another  third  considered  the 
future  as  quite  fair.  A  final  third  reported  it  uncertain  and  poor. 
This  third  includes  the  majority  of  smaller  churches,  and  many  of 
those  receiving  Home  Mission  Aid.  Despite  the  optimism  disclosed, 
the  fact  remains  that  the  members  of  these  churches  have  not  de¬ 
voted  much  thought  to  the  future  of  the  Church  in  their  counties. 

66 


CHAPTER  VII 


Equipment  and  Finance 


HE  data  on  equipment  and  finance  here  presented  relate 


only 


to  the  six  counties  selected  for  intensive  study. 

Of  the  280  church  organizations  in  these  counties  259 


own  buildings,  and  the  other  21  worship  in  school  houses,  stores  or 
halls.  Ninety  per  cent,  of  these  church-owned  buildings  are  of 
wood,  and  four  out  of  every  five  have  only  one  room  and  are 
lighted  by  oil  lamps.  One-tenth  of  these  churches  are  in  poor 
condition  while  an  equal  number  are  reported  very  good.  The  great 
majority  are,  however,  classified  as  fair.  Fourteen  of  the  larger 
churches  have  two  rooms,  twenty-two  have  from  three  to  five 
rooms,  a  dozen  from  six  to  nine,  and  four  churches  have  ten  or 
more  rooms. 

The  total  seating  capacity  of  the  auditoriums  is  sufficient  to 
accommodate  two-thirds  of  the  population.  It  will  be  seen,  there¬ 
fore,  that  even  the  one-room  buildings  are  adapted  to  seat  the 
largest  audiences  that  ordinarily  assemble  on  the  most  important 
occasions,  such  as  fifth-Sunday  meetings  or  evangelistic  services. 
The  average  seating  capacity  of  a  church  is  245.  No  church  among 
these  280  has  any  social  equipment  except  an  occasional  kitchen, 
and  except  also  one  stereopticon  and  a  victrola  possessed  by  one  of 
the  churches. 

Virtually  the  same  results  were  obtained  in  a  study  of  nearly 
8,000  Southern  Methodist  churches,  86.3  per  cent,  of  which  had 
but  one  room.  Four  and  five-tenths  per  cent,  had  two  rooms. 
Nine  and  two-tenths  per  cent,  had  from  three  to  five  rooms. 

It  becomes  apparent  that  the  chief  function  of  each  of  these 
churches  is  to  furnish  auditorium  space  for  an  audience.  Fittle  else 
apparently  is  expected.  The  program  is  a  preaching  program.  The 
one-room  building  is  not  well  adapted  for  any  modern  religious 
educational  program. 

The  South  Pays  Its  Share 

The  financial  records  of  the  churches  in  the  South  are  very 
good  when  the  program,  equipment  and  administration  are  consid- 


67 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


ered.  With  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  country  churches  on  a 
once-a-month  preaching  schedule,  it  is  hardly  to  be  expected  that 
the  rate  of  giving  will  be  high ;  and  indeed  the  contributions  do 
show  a  direct  relation  to  the  amount  of  pastoral  service  a  con¬ 
gregation  receives.  It  should  also  be  stated  that  in  recent  years 
church  contributions  have  increased  throughout  the  South ;  and  that 
while  the  collapse  of  the  cotton  market  seriously  affected  the  church 
receipts  during  the  year  of  the  Survey,  nevertheless  the  South 
shared  in  the  general  advance,  especially  in  benevolent  giving,  which 
has  taken  place  throughout  the  United  States  during  the  last  five 
years. 

The  Southern  Methodists,  for  instance,  during  the  last  year 
contributed  for  their  Centenary  and  Educational  Campaigns  ap¬ 
proximately  twenty  million  dollars  on  five-year  pledges  aggregating 
seventy-five  million.  The  Southern  Baptist  benevolences  for  home 
and  foreign  missions  have  increased  from  less  than  a  quarter  of 
a  million  dollars  thirty  years  ago  to  nearly  a  million  and  three- 
quarters  at  the  time  of  the  last  religious  census  in  1916,  since  which 
time  this  denomination  has  had  its  receipts  materially  increased 
through  its  Forward  Movement. 

Several  factors  enter  into  the  amount  of  per  capita  giving.  In 
these  six  counties  it  averages  $10.52  per  member  a  year.  The  town 
and  village  churches  better  this  record  by  more  than  58  per  cent, 
in  churches  with  resident  ministers,  and  about  25  per  cent,  in 
churches  without  resident  ministers.  In  the  open  country  the  aver¬ 
age  is  lower ;  but  this  may  be  accounted  for  by  the  small  amount 
of  ministerial  service  which  these  churches  receive  as  compared 
with  the  service  received  by  those  at  the  center. 

Another  factor  is  the  economic  environment  of  the  church. 
Those  located  in  the  mountain  and  hill  sections  of  Blount  and 
Colbert  counties,  where  the  soil  is  poor  and  the  marketing  of  prod¬ 
ucts  is  difficult  and  expensive,  average  but  $5.62  per  member  a  year, 
which  is  only  a  little  more  than  half  the  total  average  per  capita 
giving  in  these  two  counties. 

An  adequate  financial  system  also  plays  a  most  important  part.* 
Many  of  the  churches  are  adopting  modern  methods  of  church 
finance.  Seventy-eight  of  them  budget  all  monies,  and  fifty-two 
more  budget  their  local  expenses  one  year  in  advance.  Almost  half 
the  churches,  therefore,  are  familiar  with  the  operations  of  a  budget 
system.  Of  the  160  churches  using  this  system  in  some  form  or 

*  See  definitions  in  Appendix. 

68 


EQUIPMENT  AND  FINANCE 


other,  108,  or  73  per  cent.,  have  an  every-member  canvass,  and 
sixty-six  use  the  weekly  envelope  system. 

One-quarter  of  the  churches,  therefore,  have  adopted  the  entire 
system  of  church  finance  now  most  approved.  The  results  of  this 
system  are  clearly  apparent.  The  churches  that  use  in  their  finan¬ 
cial  organizations  at  least  two  of  the  three  component  features  of 
the  modern  system,  contributed  to  all  causes  an  average  of  $10.75 
per  member  a  year.  Those  with  no  financial  system  averaged  only 
$8.00  per  member  a  year.  In  some  counties  the  difference  is  not 
very  large,  notably  in  Blount,  where  virtually  all  the  churches  are 
in  the  open  country  and  where  mountain  conditions  prevail.  In 
other  counties,  however,  the  range  is  much  larger.  In  Colbert,  for 
instance,  the  difference  in  favor  of  an  adequate  system  as  against 
haphazard  methods  is  nearly  threefold. 

In  the  year  preceding  the  survey  the  270  churches  that  keep 
financial  records  raised  $186,722.30.  The  forty-seven  town  and 
village  churches  among  these  accounted  for  a  little  more  than  half 
this  sum  with  their  average  of  $2,010.80  per  congregation.  This 
compares  quite  favorably  with  the  average  receipts  for  town  and 
village  churches  in  other  regions.  On  the  other  hand,  the  average 
expenditures  for  all  causes  in  the  country  churches  were  $413.52 
per  congregation,  which  is  the  lowest  average  for  any  region  in 
America.  This  may  be  accounted  for  by  the  handicap  of  the 
absentee  pastor,  and  by  the  general  economic  situation. 

Receipts  and  Expenditures 

In  this  discussion  of  the  financial  methods  of  the  churches  it  is 
interesting  to  note  that  of  all  the  money  raised  in  the  town  and 
village  churches  70  per  cent,  was  by  subscription.  Twenty-seven 
per  cent,  was  from  collections  and  3  per  cent,  was  raised  in  various 
other  ways.  In  the  country  congregations  only  three-fifths  of  the 
money  is  raised  by  subscription,  while  nearly  one-third  comes 
through  plate  collections,  and  1  per  cent,  in  other  ways.  Of  all  the 
money  received  42  per  cent,  goes  to  the  ministers  in  salaries,  37 
per  cent,  is  contributed  for  benevolent  purposes  and  21  per  cent,  is 
apportioned  for  new  buildings,  up-keep  and  miscellaneous  expenses. 

The  proportion  of  money  given  to  benevolences  is  high.  Prior 
to  the  Great  War  it  was  the  exceptional  country  church  which  gave 
as  much  as  25  per  cent,  of  its  income  to  others.  The  effect  of  the 
recent  denominational  drives,  and  probably  a  surviving  effect  of  the 
war  campaigns,  have  raised  the  level  of  giving,  and  especially  benevo- 

69 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


lent  giving,  so  that  it  is  not  unusual,  in  whole  counties,  for  the 
churches  to  donate  an  average  of  from  one-quarter  to  one-third  of 
their  income  to  benevolent  causes.  A  record  of  37  per  cent,  for  a 
group  of  half-a-dozen  counties  is  unusually  good. 

It  should  be  stated,  however,  in  regard  to  this  record  that  it  is 
easy  for  a  church  whose  budget  averages  less  than  $500  annually, 
and  which  has  a  non-resident  minister  and  therefore  small  over¬ 
head  expense,  to  maintain  a  high  proportion  of  benevolent  giving 
which  may  not  necessarily  indicate  high  per  capita  offerings.  This 
is  true  of  the  South,  whose  average  per  capita  offering  of  a  little 
over  $10.00  is  low.  The  second  factor  contributing  to  this  high 
proportion  of  benevolent  giving  is  the  exceptionally  good  work  being 
done  in  certain  of  the  town  and  village  churches  which  have  pro¬ 
gressive  congregations  and  resident  pastors  with  missionary  vision. 

Home  Mission  Aid 

In  the  United  States  one  church  out  of  every  six  in  the  town  and 
country  region  is  helped  by  the  national,  state  or  district  home  mis¬ 
sion  aid.  In  the  six  basic  counties  under  survey,  forty-five  churches, 
or  approximately  16  per  cent.,  which  is  almost  the  same  as  the  per¬ 
centage  elsewhere,  received  aid.  This  aid  averaged  $283.30  per 
church  a  year.  Some  of  these  churches  have  been  aided  for  more 
than  fifty  years,  and  slightly  more  than  one-third  of  them  have 
received  this  assistance  for  over  a  decade.  Nearly  three-quarters 
of  those  aided  compete  with  other  churches ;  and  in  quite  a  number 
of  these  cases  the  competition  is  with  a  self-supporting  church  of 
the  same  denomination.  The  thirty-three  aided  churches  which 
are  competing  with  others  in  their  communities  are  given  slightly 
more  aid  per  church  than  are  the  remaining  dozen  which  have  a 
clear  field  and  which  are  the  only  religious  institutions  serving 
their  communities.  It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  nearly  $10,000 
of  the  $13,000  expended  in  such  aid  is  given  more  to  sustain  a 
denominational  group  than  to  sustain  the  ministry  of  religion  in  a 
community  which  would  otherwise  be  without  such  service. 

This  system  of  aid  is  obviously  wasteful.  The  South,  in  common 
with  other  parts  of  the  country,  needs  a  redefinition  of  the  ex¬ 
pression  “Home  Mission  Aid”  in  terms  of  the  larger  purposes  of 
Him  who  knows  neither  “bond  nor  free,  male  or  female,  Jew  or 
Gentile.”  It's  new  meaning  would  bring  the  churches  to  realize 
that  the  new  needs  arising  in  the  South  call  for  a  pooling  and  a 
strategic  direction  of  their  precious  resources  instead  of  wasteful, 

70 


EQUIPMENT  AND  FINANCE 


futile  competition  and  overchurching.  There  is  a  city-ward  drift 
of  population  which  will  create  a  need  for  churches  of  a  new  type 
in  many  of  the  industrial  centers.  There  is  need  of  support  for 
an  adequate  ministry  in  the  less  favored  agricultural  sections,  and 
for  a  church  that  will  minister  more  richly  and  variously  to  its 
community  than  do  most  of  the  churches  under  consideration. 
There  are  communities  that  are  without  churches  and  that  need 
attention.*  Moreover,  the  South  cannot  continue  to  avoid  its  duty 
to  the  foreign-born  immigrant.  One-third  of  the  unnaturalized 
inhabitants  of  the  United  States  are  on  the  land,  and  there  are 
signs  that  the  coming  decade  will  bring  an  increase  of  foreign-born 
settlers  to  the  farm  lands  of  the  South. 

The  financial  situation  of  the  churches  therefore  holds  warning 
of  danger  yet  inspires  hope.  If  the  Church  develops  a  program  that 
will  let  it  keep  pace  as  the  South  advances,  and  if  its  proportion  of 
missionary  giving  is  maintained,  Southern  Protestantism  will  become 
one  of  the  greatest  factors  in  world  evangelism.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  South  is  content  to  give  to  religion  on  the  basis  of  about 
twenty  cents  a  week  per  member,  no  great  progress  on  the  part 
of  the  church  can  be  expected.  It  is  not  too  much  to  demand 
such  progress  from  the  church  of  the  South.  Studies  made  by  the 
University-  of  North  Carolina  Club  show  that  its  own  state  is 
spending  ten  times  as  much  on  luxuries  as  on  education  and  re¬ 
ligion.  Under  such  conditions  the  Church  has  the  right  to  call 
its  membership  to  a  deeper  consecration  of  its  resources  to  the 
essential  purposes  of  Christianity. 

*  Of  the  Southern  Methodist  rural  churches  12.8  per  cent,  were  receiving 
home  mission  aid.  Many  of  these  were  in  the  sort  of  communities  listed 
above,  as  needing  aid.  The  extension  program,  regarded  as  necessary  by  this 
denomination,  has  already  been  mentioned. 


71 


CHAPTER  VIII 


Church  Program 

PREACHING  is  the  overshadowing  feature  of  the  Southern 
Country  Church  program.  With  only  this  in  view  the 
church  buildings  are  planned,  the  various  religious  activities 
are  scheduled.  And  yet,  as  has  been  shown  in  the  foregoing  pages, 
four  out  of  every  five  churches  in  the  South  are  closed,  as  far  as 
the  holding  of  regular  services  is  concerned,  on  at  least  one  Sunday 
a  month ;  while  figures  presented  by  Dr.  Masters  for  the  Baptists, 
and  by  the  most  recent  rural  church  survey  by  the  Methodists,  indi¬ 
cate  that  on  any  given  Sunday  two  out  of  every  three  of  the  rural 
churches  in  the  South  are  closed. 

In  fact,  one-fourth  of  the  total  number  do  not  even  have  Sunday 
schools.  Despite  this  indifference  and  neglect,  the  Sunday  school  is 
of  the  greatest  importance  to  the  country  church.  In  seventy  coun¬ 
ties,  with  a  total  of  1,657  schools,  whose  aggregate  membership 
is  a  little  over  121,000,  the  town  schools  average  187  pupils,  the 
village  85,  and  the  country  58.  In  town  and  village  the  average 
attendance  is  just  a  little  less  than  two-thirds  of  those  enrolled, 
but  in  the  country  it  is  71.2  per  cent. 

The  Sunday  School 

In  a  detailed  examination  of  the  church  program  based  on  the 
six  typical  counties,  the  Sunday  schools  incline  to  the  same  sort  of 
program  that  characterizes  the  churches.  The  lessons  are  taught 
in  a  perfunctory  way.  The  scholars  are  given  no  other  activities  to 
absorb  their  interests  and  energies.  For  instance,  in  the  country 
only  the  exceptional  Sunday  school  makes  mission  study  a  definite 
part  of  its  school  work,  though  40  per  cent,  of  the  village  Sunday 
schools  do  include  a  certain  amount  of  such  work.  Only  one-third 
of  the  schools  so  much  as  take  up  regular  missionary  offerings ; 
only  seven  observe  Decision  Day ;  and  but  three  have  classes  to 
prepare  for  church  membership.  These  three  are  in  some  of  the 
very  strongest  of  the  churches.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that 
only  110,  or  less  than  half  the  Sunday  schools,  sent  pupils  into 
church  membership;  and  they  sent  a  total  of  1,034. 

72 


CHURCH  PROGRAM 


The  village  Sunday  schools  have  an  average  of  two  and  one- 
half  pupils  each  pursuing  their  regular  studies  beyond  high-school 
grade.  The  country  Sunday  schools  average  one  each.  There  are 
only  thirteen  teacher-training  classes,  eight  of  them  in  villages. 
Nine  more  schools  attempt  some  sort  of  leadership  training.  For 
other  activities,  only  twenty  Sunday  schools,  twelve  of  them  in  the 
villages,  have  organized  classes.  Only  about  one  Sunday  school 
in  twenty  has  a  home  department  and  only  about  one  in  ten  a 
cradle  roll.  One  of  the  most  serious  features  in  the  situation  is 
that  of  the  223  Sunday  schools  only  147,  or  a  scant  two-thirds, 
keep  open  the  entire  year.  Poor  roads  chiefly  are  responsible  for 
this. 

In  the  last  ten  years,  fifteen  Sunday  schools  have  sent  twenty- 
three  pupils  into  professional  Christian  service.  Three  of  the  six 
counties  have  not  sent  a  single  candidate  during  the  last  decade. 
Twelve  of  the  twenty-three  sent  into  service  are  products  of  schools 
in  Orange  County  and  largely  of  those  in  Chapel  Hill,  where,  it 
will  be  recalled,  the  state  university  is  located.  In  view  of  the  fact 
that  Protestantism  has  virtually  no  competition  in  the  South,  and 
that  religion  in  the  South  has  been  noted  for  its  fervor  and  its 
deep  emotionalism,  this  record  is  both  surprising  and  alarming. 
There  are  'single  counties  on  the  Pacific  Coast  where  materialism  is 
supposed  to  have  full  sway  and  where  church  membership  numbers 
but  one-tenth  of  the  population,  that  have  sent  at  least  as  many 
young  people  into  Christian  service  in  the  last  decade  as  have  these 
half  dozen  counties  put  together.  It  is  hard  to  fix  upon  any  one 
thing  as  accounting  for  this. 

Contributory  Causes 

But  the  situation  is  not  beyond  remedy.  Poor  schools  have 
something  to  do  with  it.  The  Church  program,  meager  to  the 
vanishing  point,  is  another  factor,  since  it  makes  no  appeal  to 
virile  young  men  and  women  who  judge  the  Church  by  what  they 
see.  In  support  of  this  view  is  the  fact  that  the  majority  of  those 
who  have  gone  into  Christian  service  have  come  from  the  strongest 
congregations. 

The  South  has  rewarded  its  country  ministry  so  poorly,  and 
given  it  a  task  so  unnecessarily  hard,  that  the  appeal  of  that  min¬ 
istry  to  the  young  American  of  to-day  is  not  strong.  The  young 
American  desires  to  be  something  more  than  an  absentee  preacher 
of  sermons.  As  for  foreign  missions,  the  chances  are  that  no  likely 

73 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


candidate  has  heard  of  such  a  thing  in  the  twelve  or  twenty-four 
times  his  church  has  been  open  during  the  year.  Another  ex¬ 
planation  may  lie  in  the  fact  that  so  many  of  the  country  ministers 
are  themselves  untrained  men.  They  have  experienced  religion 
emotionally  and  in  no  other  way ;  and  their  message  is  too  often 
a  repetition  of  their  personal  emotional  experience  and  little  else. 
The  more  universal  message  of  Christianity  based  upon  the  work 
and  the  experience  of  the  Church  in  the  Home  and  the  Foreign 
fields,  with  its  accumulated  wealth  of  social  and  religious  data,  its 


AN  ANCIENT  AND  PICTURESQUE  HOME 


service  to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  is  what  the  Church  and 
its  members  find  inspiring  to-day. 

Although  the  testimony  of  these  untrained  leaders,  recruited 
from  the  ranks  of  the  laity,  furnishes  inspiration,  yet  they  fail  to 
see  the  necessity  of  recruiting  others  to  become  professionally 
trained  for  tasks  which  they  themselves  perform  without  such 
training.  The  South  must  solve  this  problem,  because  an  absence 
of  adequate  leadership  has  caused  the  paralysis  of  the  southern 
rural  church.  Moreover,  in  order  to  survive,  the  rural  church 
must  be  self-sustaining,  not  only  financially,  but  in  developing  its 
own  leaders  who  can  best  interpret  its  continuing  program.  That 
the  pinch  of  too  few  ministers  is  beginning  to  be  felt  is  shown 
in  the  fact  that,  of  the  280  churches,  one  out  of  every  ten  was 
pastorless  at  the  time  of  the  Survey. 

74 


CHURCH  PROGRAM 


The  Young  People 

In  the  basic  counties  studied  there  are  only  fifty-eight  young 
people's  organizations  other  than  Sunday  schools.  In  other  words, 
less  than  one  church  out  of  four  has  such  an  organization.  In 
addition  to  this,  three  churches  have  three  organizations  for  boys 
and  six  for  girls.  With  great  uniformity,  ministers  and  church 
leaders  confessed  that  their  greatest  problem  was  to  hold  the  young 
people.  But  the  causes  of  failure  are  not  far  to  seek.  In  one  of 
these  counties,  55  per  cent,  of  the  churches  have  no  Sunday  schools; 
yet  some  of  them  have  more  than  150  active  members.  This  means 
that  in  each  of  these  churches  with  a  large  membership  of  adults 
no  provision  is  made  for  the  religious  education  of  the  children 
who  are  to  be  the  members  and  the  leaders  of  the  southern  church 
to-morrow. 

Many  investigators  have  recorded  their  impressions  of  this  im¬ 
portant  problem  of  the  relation  of  the  young  folk  to  the  Church. 
Professor  John  F.  Smith,  of  Berea  College,  has  presented  reliable 
data  bearing  on  the  situation,  especially  as  regards  the  mountaineers. 
The  young  men  are  simply  not  reached  by  the  country  church  and 
are  hostile  to  it ;  and  responsibility  for  their  attitude  rests  largely 
upon  the  inexperienced,  untrained  minister.  He  may  reprimand  the 
young  folk  for  their  way  of  amusing  themselves ;  but  he  offers  no 
constructive  program  of  activities  to  take  the  places  of  those  he 
condemns. 

Labored  and  tedious  doctrinal  sermons  mean  nothing  to  those 
in  the  first  flush  of  young  manhood  and  womanhood  who  naturally 
desire  to  live  in  the  throbbing  present.  They  are  as  frequently 
alienated  by  the  highly  emotional  and  destructive  program  of  some 
preachers  as  they  are  by  the  indefinite,  austere  and  unsympathetic 
attitude  of  others.  The  young  people  whom  Professor  Smith  inter¬ 
viewed  frankly  expressed  the  need  of  a  trained  ministry.  They 
insisted  that  the  untrained  minister  is  ordained  for  failure.  They 
look  for  fewer  churches  and  better  programs. 

The  modern  church  is  vitally  concerned  with  the  health  and 
welfare  of  its  young  people.  This  aroused  social  sense  concerns 
itself  with  their  play  as  well  as  with  their  work.  But  the  recrea¬ 
tional  contribution  of  the  Southern  churches  is  likewise  meager. 
Scarcely  one  in  five  has  even  an  annual  Sunday  school  picnic,  which 
is  a  time-honored  event  in  the  Protestant  Church.  Only  one-tenth 
of  the  churches  have  socials,  and  less  than  one-tenth  have  any 
other  recreational  activities.  Four  churches  are  interested  in  co- 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


operating  with  agricultural  and  community  enterprises,  and  not 
quite  one  in  ten  has  some  cultural  and  educational  features  in  its 
program.  It  is  natural  to  find  in  the  South,  with  its  great  historic 
traditions,  that  national  holidays  make  the  chief  appeal  in  varying 
the  normal  program.  These  are  observed  in  sixty-seven,  or  almost 
one- fourth,  of  the  churches. 

An  equal  number  take  part  in  local  charity  when  the  occasion 
arises ;  but  there  is  no  sociological  attitude  towards  the  problem 
of  charity  calling  for  a  study,  and  for  sympathetic  understanding, 
of  the  causes  and  results.  It  is  merely  a  kindly,  neighborly  interest. 
Only  a  score  of  churches  undertake  any  form  of  missionary  service 
beyond  the  taking  of  offerings.  Here  and  there  a  church  supports 
a  native  evangelist,  and  a  few  others  provide  for  the  support  of 
an  orphan  child  each  in  a  church  school.  One-ninth  of  the  churches 
engage  in  union  services  at  irregular  intervals. 

The  Church  Sets  Its  Par  Standard 

Throughout  this  book  tentative  suggestions  are  made  for  the 
sort  of  rewarding  mission  work  that  should  engage  the  attention 
of  a  successful  church.  Of  recent  years  country  church  leaders 
have  made  various  efforts  to  summarize  their  ideas  as  to  the  rea¬ 
sonable  standard  for  church  work.  From  this  effort  there  finally 
evolved  a  so-called  “par  standard”  for  country  churches.  This 
standard,  proposed  by  the  Home  Missions  Council  in  collaboration 
with  the  rural  executives  of  all  denominational  Home  Mission 
Boards,  was  submitted  to  the  Town  and  Country  state  supervisors 
of  the  Interchurch  World  Movement. 

Virtually  all  of  these  men,  besides  having  had  executive  and 
survey  experience,  had  been  country  pastors.  Every  state  in  the 
Union  was  represented.  The  par  standard  was  unanimously  ac¬ 
cepted  as  a  reasonable  objective  for  any  country  church  seeking  to 
fulfill  all  its  obligations.  Since  that  time  a  number  of  denomina¬ 
tions  or  synods,  districts  or  associations  of  denominations,  have 
adopted  this  standard,  with  slight  modifications,  as  their  own. 
Among  these  far-sighted  denominations  is  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church,  South. 

To  present  a  summary  of  the  suggestions  made  in  this  book, 
and  in  order  that  the  people  of  the  region  may  see  how  their 
churches  stand  in  relation  to  this  achievable  ideal,  the  churches  of 
the  six  basic  counties  have  been  graded  according  to  the  par 
standard.  The  points  covered  in  this  standard  are  listed  below. 

76 


CHURCH  PROGRAM 


The  figure  in  parenthesis  after  each  item  indicates  the  number  of 
churches  having  this  feature,  out  of  the  total  of  280  churches  graded.. 
The  items  after  which  no  figure  appears  are  those  not  covered  in 
the  schedules  used. 


Table 

A  Church  Measuring  Rod 

Adequate  Physical  Equipment 
Up-to-date  parsonage  (57) 

Adequate  church  auditorium  space  (265) 

Social  and  recreational  equipment  (5) 

Well-equipped  kitchen 
Organ  or  piano 

Separate  rooms  for  Sunday  school  classes  or  departments  (40) 
Stereopticon  or  motion-picture  machine  (1) 

Sanitary  toilets  (19) 

Horse-sheds  or  parking  space  (6) 

Property  in  good  repair  and  condition  (225) 

Pastor 

Pastor  resident  in  this  parish  (49) 

Pastor  giving  full  time  to  this  community  (14) 

Service  in  this  church  every  Sunday  (32) 

Minimum  salary  of  $1,200  (95) 

Finance 

Church  budget  adopted  annually  (141) 

Every  member  canvass  conducted  annually  (108) 

Benevolences  equal  to  25  per  cent,  of  current  expenses  (174) 

Meetings 

Cooperation  with  other  churches  in  same  community  (34) 

Systematic  Evangelism  (93) 

Parish 

Church  serves  all  Racial  and  Occupational  groups 

Religious  Education 

Sunday  school  held  entire  year  (189) 

Sunday  school  enrollment  equal  to  church  membership  (82) 

Attempt  to  bring  pupils  into  church  membership  (97) 

Special  instruction  for  church  membership  (5) 

Teacher  training  or  normal  class  (9) 

Provision  for  leadership  training  (11) 

Service  and  Cooperation 

Organized  activities  for  all  age  and  sex  groups  (27) 

Cooperation  with  boards  and  denominational  agencies  (49) 

Program  adopted  annually,  25  per  cent,  of  membership  participating 
Church  reaching  entire  community 


A  Good  Southern  Example 


Centerton,  a  little  open  country  community  of  northwest  Arkan¬ 
sas.  has  a  Southern  Methodist  Church  whose  records  prove  what 

77 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


can  be  clone  when  community  leadership  really  awakens  to  its  re¬ 
sponsibilities.  Farming  is  the  only  industry  here.  The  people  are 
all  Americans  and  of  fine  southern  stock.  Only  two  years  ago  the 
church  was  weak,  without  adequate  program  or  systematic  finance, 
was  poorly  attended  and  indifferently  sustained.  To-day  this 
church  is  the  base  of  operations  in  a  progressive  circuit,  with  com¬ 
munity  programs  for  its  combined  membership  of  over  500.  When 
a  hurricane  blew  the  Centerton  church  away  last  April,  plans  were 
immediately  laid  for  a  new  departmental  community  building. 

Every  age  and  sex  group  in  Centerton  village  is  organized  for 
service.  Seventy-five  men  and  boys  are  enrolled  in  a  large,  well- 
attended  athletic  club ;  the  girls  in  the  Pollyanna  Club  have  for  their 
interests  civic  and  social  improvements ;  the  Boy  Scouts  are  active 
under  the  leadership  of  a  live-wire  pastor ;  and  the  Ladies’  Aid  Soci¬ 
ety,  with  its  forty-two  members,  is  a  vital  force  in  the  community  as 
a  women’s  community  club  as  well  as  an  effective  collector  of  funds 
for  the  church.  The  Centerton  church  has  adopted  a  systematic 
method  of  handling  funds ;  all  money  is  now  raised  by  budget.  A 
Gospel  of  Neighborliness  has  brought  the  people  closer  together 
and  broken  down  town  and  country  barriers. 

The  Sunday  school  has  a  seventeen-piece  orchestra  which  is  in 
constant  demand  for  miles  around.  Study  groups  and  teacher¬ 
training  classes  are  held  regularly.  Every  one  has  his  church  job; 
and  though  many  are  not  members  of  this  community  church  yet 
they  are  ready  and  willing  to  line  up  with  the  organization  and 
support  its  program  whole-heartedly.  Their  spirit  of  cooperation 
is  making  the  church  a  strong  central  influence  throughout  north¬ 
west  Arkansas. 

This  Arkansas  story  shows  in  an  inspiring  way  what  a  country 
church  in  the  South  can  do.  It  shows  the  progressive  tendency 
among  the  church  leaders  of  the  South.  The  rapid  expansion  of 
summer  schools  among  the  Southern  Methodists,  where  men  are 
trained  in  modern  church  administration  while  they  derive  inspira¬ 
tion  for  evangelistic  and  devotional  service,  must  inevitably  have 
a  tremendous  effect  upon  the  entire  South.  The  Department  of 
Home  Missions  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South,  is 
standing  for  a  four-year  pastorate,  a  community-wide  survey  on 
which  is  to  be  based  an  extensive  evangelistic  campaign,  at  least 
one  service  each  Sunday  for  every  church,  effective  pastoral  visita¬ 
tion,  and  a  program  that  shall  include  every  social  as  well  as  religious 
interest  in  the  homes  of  the  community. 

78 


CHURCH  PROGRAM 


What  a  Southern  Denomination  Plans 

Among  the  other  reforms  advocated  bv  the  Methodist  Church, 
South,  are  reorganized  Sunday  schools,  missionary  and  religions 
societies,  adequate  provision  for  recreational  and  social  life,  espe¬ 
cially  through  Sunday  schools,  young  people’s  organizations,  and 
Boy  and  Girl  Scouts.  A  budget  system  is  outlined  for  every  church 
with  a  broad-gauge  program  of  community  service.  The  Board  also 
advocates  cooperation  with  other  agencies,  secular  as  well  as  re¬ 
ligious,  and  for  better  relations  between  the  races.  A  program  of 
this  kind  should  receive  the  support  of  the  denomination,  serving 
as  it  does  almost  one-half  of  the  great  South,  for  it  is  a  marked  ad¬ 
vance  in  the  ways  and  means  of  bringing  the  services  of  the  Church 
to  the  rural  people  of  the  South. 

The  same  department,  under  its  rural  division,  is  supervising 
an  entire  district  which  is  becoming  a  demonstration  point.  A  score 
for  each  church  has  been  worked  out  and  monthly  reports  are  made 
which  are  circulated  among  all  the  churches.  Each  church  aims  to 
record  monthly  some  definite  progress.  The  score  card  suggests 
such  matters  as  a  household  survey ;  an  evangelistic  meeting  an¬ 
nually  ;  every-member  canvass ;  use  of  lay  workers ;  the  holding  of 
a  rural  life  institute ;  attendance  by  the  minister  at  some  rural 
summer  school ;  and  a  broad,  constructive  program  for  the  Sunday 
school,  and  for  other  organizations,  which  will  attract  and  hold  the 
young  people  of  the  South. 


79 


CHAPTER  IX 


The  Negro  Rural  Church 


SO  far  we  have  considered  only  the  white  rural  church.  There 
are,  however,  nine  million  Negroes  in  the  South,  three- 
fourths  of  whom  live  in  small  towns  or  in  the  open  country. 
It  is  estimated  that  of  the  Negroes  in  the  open  country  there  are 
about  three  million  church  members.  There  are  no  exact  data  as 
to  the  number  of  Negro  churches  in  the  rural  South;  but  the  most 
reliable  estimates  available  place  their  number  at  about  thirty  thou¬ 
sand,  and  the  number  of  preachers  serving  these  at  twenty-five 
thousand.*  It  is  obvious,  therefore,  that  the  Negro  rural  church 
cannot  be  overlooked  in  this  survey. 

It  should  be  remembered  at  the  outset  that  the  Negro  in  America 
is  here  through  no  choice  of  his  own,  but  as  a  result  of  force 
exercised  by  the  white  man  for  the  white  man’s  economic  advan¬ 
tage.  Nor  can  one  section  of  the  country  accuse  any  other  section 
of  sole  responsibility  for  the  Negro’s  presence  here.  The  Negro, 
therefore,  has  a  peculiar  claim  upon  the  white  man’s  interest  and 
sense  of  obligation. 

Moreover,  the  interests  of  the  two  races  are  essentially  at  one. 
Economic  welfare,  health,  sanitation,  education,  moral  character 
are  all  essential  to  safe  citizenship  for  the  Negro,  just  as  for  any 
other  people.  Lacking  these  essentials,  he  becomes  a  handicap,  if 
not  a  positive  peril,  to  the  community  in  which  he  lives. 

There  are  the  best  of  reasons,  then,  why  the  white  man  should 
study  the  Negro  church — the  chief  source  of  the  Negro’s  aspiration 
and  the  molder  of  his  ideals — in  the  hope  of  finding  some  means  of 
adding  to  its  effectiveness. 

On  the  economic  side  the  Negro  has  been  and  is  a  great  asset 
to  the  South,  furnishing  a  large  part  of  its  labor  supply.  In  par¬ 
ticular,  he  has  been  invaluable  in  the  cotton  field.  Recent  migra¬ 
tions  to  the  North  have  been  seriously  felt  in  certain  parts  of  the 
South,  from  which  in  some  instances  whole  Negro  communities  have 
moved.  These  migrations  have  necessarily  affected  the  Negro 


*  Rev.  G.  Lake  Imes,  Dean,  Tuskegee  Bible  Training  School, 

80 


THE  NEGRO  RURAL  CHURCH 


churches  in  the  South,  some  of  which  have  lost  from  one-third  to 
one-half  their  membership.  It  is  estimated  that  a  half  million 
colored  people  have  taken  part  in  this  exodus  extending  over  a 
period  of  three  or  four  years. 

In  the  light  of  the  heavy  handicap  of  his  background  of  slavery, 
the  Negro’s  progress  during  his  sixty  years  of  freedom  has  been 
astounding.  The  figures  below,  quoted  from  “The  American  Sur¬ 
vey  of  the  Interchurch  World  Movement,’’  show  the  striking  con¬ 
trast  between  his  status  in  1860  and  his  status  to-day. 


1860 

1920 

Homes  owned  . 

....  12,000 

650,000 

Farms  owned  . 

218,612 

Farms  owned,  acres  . 

13,942,512 

Farms  owned,  value  . . 

$554,158,000 

Farms  operated . 

.  .  . .  20,000 

926,257 

Business  enterprises  . 

....  2,100 

60,000 

Colleges  and  normal  schools . 

15 

500 

College  graduates  (aggregate)  ... 

7,000 

Public  school  teachers  . 

600 

30,000 

Public  school  pupils . 

. ...  100,000 

2,000,000 

Illiteracy  . 

cent.  23 

Where  no  migration  has  taken  place  there  has  been  a  tendency 
toward  a  stabilized  community  life.  And  where  conditions  have 
been  favorable,  farm  and  home  ownership  among  the  Negroes  has 
greatly  increased,  in  some  counties  three-  or  four-fold.  This  is 
true  in  village  and  town  as  well  as  in  the  country.*  Progress  is 
also  shown  by  the  small  total  of  petty  offenses  in  those  communi¬ 
ties  in  which  ownership  is  increasing  and  in  which,  therefore,  a 
pride  of  home  is  developing. 

The  Negro  survey  was  not  made  in  all  of  the  six  counties  used 
as  the  basis  for  the  study  of  the  white  churches.  The  results  given 
here  are  for  three  counties  only :  Harford  County,  Maryland,  rep¬ 
resenting  the  Negro  under  conditions  approaching  those  of  the 
North;  Orange  County,  North  Carolina,  showing  him  in  a  rather 
isolated  development  on  soil  not  adapted  to  cotton  raising;  and 
Colbert  County,  Alabama,  most  of  which  lies  within  the  heart  of 
the  black  belt  of  the  South.  To  the  results  of  this  survey  have  been 
added  some  data  derived  from  the  Census  reports,  the  Bible  Train¬ 
ing  School  and  Research  Department  of  Tuskegee  Institute,  and 
from  the  Federal  Council  Commission  on  the  Church  and  Race 
Relations.  The  total  Negro  population  of  the  three  counties  for 
which  results  are  given  is  14,157.  Of  the  thirty  communities,  five- 

*  Prof.  Eugene  C.  Branson’s  “Study  of  the  Negro  in  Orange  County, 
North  Carolina.” 


81 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


eighths  are  growing  and  a  fourth  are  decreasing  in  population.  The 
decrease  is  caused  by  young  people  moving  North,  and  those  of 
middle  age  moving  to  the  towns. 

Certain  communities  have  grown  because  the  Negroes  have 
begun  to  own  their  own  farms,  or  because  higher  wages  have  been 
paid  and  Negroes  have  come  in  from  elsewhere.  In  both  instances, 
better  schools  have  been  established,  and  have  helped  to  attract 
Negro  settlers.  The  population  has  thus  become  more  self-reliant, 
more  independent  and  better  educated  in  the  growing  communities 
than  in  those  in  which  tenancy  prevails  or  in  which  the  population 
is  decreasing. 


A  NEGRO  SUNDAY  SCHOOL 

Next  to  the  Church,  the  school  is  the  most  important  social  insti¬ 
tution,  and  much  social  life  centers  in  it.  Especially  in  Colbert 
County,  Alabama,  and  to  some  extent  in  the  other  counties  studied, 
the  Negro  school  situation  has  improved  during  the  last  few 
years.  It  is  most  encouraging  to  find  a  broad-minded  and  ambitious 
colored  woman  working  as  Colored  School  Supervisor  in  Colbert 
County,  under  the  County  Superintendent  of  Schools.  Her  efforts 
for  the  betterment  of  her  race  are  unfailing. 

In  this  connection  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  the  whole 
South  there  are  275  of  these  supervising  teachers,  visiting  regu¬ 
larly  7,850  colored  rural  schools.  These  teachers  are  paid  in  part 
by  the  counties  and  in  part  by  the  Jeanes  Fund.  The  beneficent 
results  of  the  Rosenwald  Fund  for  the  building  of  model  Negro 
schools  and  of  the  John  F.  Slater  Fund  for  the  aid  of  Negro  county 
training  schools  are  also  notable  and  worthy  of  study.  It  should 

82 


THE  NEGRO  RURAL  CHURCH 


also  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  Southern  States  are  constantly  raising 
the  level  of  Negro  education  by  the  more  generous  provision  of 
public  funds.  This  broad  policy  is  reflected  in  the  fact  that  for 
the  decade  between  1910  and  1920  Negro  illiteracy  in  the  South 
decreased  from  33.3  per  cent,  to  26  per  cent. 

There  is  a  considerable  number  of  religious  leaders  among  these 
Negroes.  Two-thirds  of  the  leaders  are  farmers,  and  almost  all 
the  rest  are  ministers  or  church  workers.  In  eighteen  of  the  thirty 
communities  there  is  a  well-developed  community  spirit,  and  in 


A  CHECKER  TOURNAMENT  OUTSIDE  THE  STORE 

almost  all  of  the  eighteen  the  schools  are  good  and  the  proportion 
of  leadership  is  high.  The  community  spirit  manifests  itself  in  the 
desire  for  better  schools,  new  school  buildings  and  better  pay  for 
teachers,  in  well-kept  homes  and  in  increased  efforts  to  acquire 
homes. 

9die  Church  is  not  only  the  most  important  agency  for  the  moral 
and  religious  guidance  of  the  Negroes,  but  it  also  contributes  largely 
to  their  social  life.  This  is  especially  true  in  Orange  County.  Evi¬ 
dence  is  found  in  the  comparatively  small  number  of  fraternal 
orders  among  the  Negroes,  the  average  being  only  one  and  one-half 
to  a  community.  The  total  membership  of  the  lodges  is  only  a  little 
more  than  half  as  much  as  the  male  membership  of  the  Church, 

83 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 

The  average  attendance,  however,  is  nearly  two-thirds  of  the  mem¬ 
bership,  which  is  a  much  larger  proportion  than  is  recorded  by  the 
white  lodges.  These  counties  have  fifteen  Negro  organizations  not 
under  church  auspices ;  and  it  is  significant  that  five  of  these  fifteen 
concern  themselves  with  school  betterment.  There  are  several  com¬ 
munity  clubs  and  one  Mothers’  Club. 

The  Negro  Church  of  the  South 

Negro  church  membership,  the  number  of  Negro  church  organ¬ 
izations,  and  the  value  of  Negro  church  property  all  have  shown 
an  amazing  increase  throughout  the  South  in  the  last  generation. 
Except  in  the  case  of  church  membership,  this  increase  has  been 
more  than  100  per  cent.  The  exclusively  Negro  denominations, 
such  as  the  African  M.  E.  Zion  and  the  National  Baptist  Conven¬ 
tion,  appear  to  be  growing  more  rapidly  than  is  the  Negro  member¬ 
ship  of  denominations  predominantly  white. 

In  the  three  counties  under  study,  there  are  seventy-eight  Negro 
churches,  eight  of  them  in  towns,  seventeen  in  villages  and  fifty-four 
in  the  open  country.  The  Baptists  control  thirty-eight  of  these, 
while  five  Methodist  groups  have  thirty-four.  The  other  six 
represent  almost  as  many  denominations. 

All  but  five  of  the  churches  have  buildings.  Seventy-two  of 
them  are  of  wooden  construction.  Two-thirds  are  in  good  and  five 
in  excellent  condition ;  but  the  remainder  are  hardly  to  be  classed 
as  better  than  poor,  or  possibly  fair.  These  poorer  churches  are 
without  paint,  or  doors,  or  windows,  or  general  repairs ;  quite  likely 
the  building  has  not  been  quite  completed.  The  grounds,  too,  are 
sometimes  not  improved.  The  seating  capacity  of  these  churches 
averages  a  little  over  300,  so  that  they  can  seat  the  church  member¬ 
ship  three  times  over,  or  the  population  with  room  to  spare.  Nine 
of  these  buildings  are  lighted  by  electricity;  the  rest  use  oil  lamps. 
It  is  most  interesting  to  learn  that  nine  of  them  have  stereopticons 
and  three  have  moving-picture  machines,  which  is  a  record  twelve 
times  better  than  that  made  by  the  white  churches  in  the  six  coun¬ 
ties  studied.  Sixty-four  of  the  buildings  have  only  one  room  each, 
five  have  two,  and  five  others  have  three  rooms  each.  There  are 
twenty-three  cemeteries. 

The  average  value  of  the  church  buildings  is  $2,437.  Buildings 
have  nearly  doubled  in  value  since  the  Negro  churches  in  Orange 
County  were  studied  five  years  ago.  The  town,  village  and  country 
churches  show  nearly  the  same  differences  in  value  as  do  the  city 

84 


THE  NEGRO  RURAL  CHURCH 


churches.  The  average  Negro  town  church  is  worth  $4,600,  the 
village  church  $2,550,  the  country  church  $1,530. 

Negro  Church  Finance 

A  surprising  number  of  the  Negro  churches  have  begun  to  use 
the  more  modern  methods  of  church  finance.  Twenty  of  them  pre¬ 
pare  budgets  for  all  monies,  and  eleven  more  for  local  expense. 
Only  eleven,  however,  use  weekly  envelopes  and  only  six  conduct  an 
annual  every-member  canvass.  For  the  most  part,  these  churches 
are  in  good  financial  condition.  The  total  debt  is  slightly  less  than 


AN  AFTERNOON  LECTURE  AT  A  NEGRO  CHURCH 


$2,400,  on  which  from  6  to  8  per  cent,  interest  is  paid.  The  total 
receipts  from  the  seventy-nine  churches  amounted  in  the  fiscal  year 
preceding  the  survey  to  within  a  few  cents  of  $42,000.  The  average 
town  church  raised  $1,455,  the  village  church  $851.76,  and  the 
country  church  $363.66.  The  average  sum  per  church  for  the  three 
counties  was  $644.37.  Half  the  money  was  raised  by  subscription, 
28  per  cent,  of  it  by  collection  and  the  rest  by  miscellaneous  methods. 
Fifty-three  per  cent,  of  the  money  was  spent  for  salaries,  20  per 
cent,  for  new  buildings  and  repairs,  12  per  cent,  for  benevolences 
and  15  per  cent,  for  sundry  running  expenses. 

These  contributions  represent  an  average  per  capita  contribution 
of  $9.00  per  member.  Five  years  ago  the  per  capita  contribution 
for  the  Negroes  in  Orange  County  was  $3.07,  and  for  whites  $4. 
These  figures,  therefore,  show  a  tremendous  increase  in  the  Negro 
contributions,  which  have  kept  pace  with  the  purchasing  power  of 

85 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


the  dollar  and  established  an  average  within  10  per  cent,  of  the 
average  contribution  of  the  white  church  members  in  the  six  counties. 

Negro  Membership 

Seven  thousand  two  hundred  and  seventy-two  Negroes  belong  to 
the  town  and  country  churches  in  these  three  counties.  Fifteen 
per  cent,  of  these,  or  1,125,  are  non-resident,  so  that  the  churches 
enroll  43.6  per  cent,  of  the  total  colored  population.  Nearly  one- 
third  of  the  resident  members  are  classed  as  inactive.  In  this 
respect  the  Negro  churches  show  the  same  tendency  that  was  noted 
in  connection  with  those  of  the  whites.  There  are,  therefore,  3,636 
active  members  of  Negro  churches,  or  50  per  cent,  of  the  total  en¬ 
rollment.  Of  these  active  members  1,600  are  employed  in  some 
gainful  occupation.  Of  the  total  number  of  Negro  operating 
farmers,  42  per  cent,  are  church  members.  Of  the  total  number  of 
Negro  tenant  farmers,  57  per  cent,  belong  to  the  churches.  It  will 
therefore  be  seen  that  the  Negro  tenant  farmers  are  proportionately 
far  more  loyal  to  their  church,  or  at  least  far  more  generally  reached 
by  the  church,  than  are  the  white  tenants. 

In  addition  to  the  active  church  membership,  538  persons  are 
reported  as  non-members  but  nevertheless  contributing ;  and  143 
more  are  in  probationary  classes  looking  forward  to  full  church 
membership.  The  resident  church  membership  is  strongly  feminine 
in  its  composition,  61  per  cent,  of  it  being  in  this  classification. 
Slightly  less  than  one-third  of  the  females  are  under  twenty-one 
years  of  age.  Males  over  twenty-one  comprise  little  more  than 
one- fourth,  and  those  under  twenty-one  a  little  more  than  one- 
tenth  of  the  total  membership.  These  seventy-eight  Negro  churches 
added  a  total  of  645  new  members  during  the  last  year ;  but 
the  net  gain  was  only  419,  or  about  11.2  per  cent,  of  the  former 
net  active  membership  and  6.1  per  cent,  of  the  former  total  mem¬ 
bership. 

The  Negro  churches  depend  almost  exclusively  upon  the  evan¬ 
gelistic  meeting  for  the  recruiting  of  church  membership.  Sixty- 
four  of  the  churches,  including  all  the  stronger  ones,  hold  such 
meetings  for  periods  of  from  ten  days  to  two  weeks.  Four  hundred 
and  seventy-two  converts  were  reported,  of  whom  418  joined  the 
Church.  Of  other  accessions  reported,  eighty  were  by  confession 
of  faith,  and  only  thirty-seven  by  letter  from  other  denominations, 
making  a  total  of  538.  Of  those  who  joined  the  Church  on  con¬ 
fession,  308  came  from  the  Sunday  school. 

86 


THE  NEGRO  RURAL  CHURCH 


Approximately  one-third  of  the  Negro  churches  enjoy  preaching 
at  least  once  on  Sunday  and  one-eighth  of  them  have  two  services 
on  Sunday.  Eighteen  are  on  the  once-a-month  basis.  Thirty-three 
have  either  two  or  three  services  each  month. 

Negro  Sunday  Schools 

The  Sunday  school  functions  largely  in  the  religious  life  of  the 
Negroes.  Whereas  throughout  the  South  one-quarter  of  the  white 
churches  (and  throughout  the  country  one-fifth  of  all  the  churches) 
have  no  Sunday  schools,  90  per  cent,  of  the  entire  number  of  Negro 


NEGRO  MEMBERS  FIX  UP  THEIR  CHURCH 


churches  report  such  schools.  All  but  six  of  the  Negro  churches 
in  these  counties  have  Sunday  schools,  with  a  total  enrollment  of 
3,746,  or  an  average  of  fifty-one.  The  average  attendance  is  thirty- 
three,  or  64  per  cent,  of  the  total  enrollment.  The  town  schools 
decidedly  lead  the  others,  their  average  enrollment  being  seventy, 
with  an  average  attendance  of  74  per  cent.  The  village  schools 
average  sixty-two  enrolled  and  thirty-seven  attending,  or  59  per  cent., 
while  those  in  the  country  have  forty-three  on  the  roll  and  an 
attendance  of  twenty-four,  or  56  per  cent. 

Fifty-two  schools,  more  than  two-fifths  of  the  total  number, 
have  165  organized  classes.  Five  use  graded  lessons,  twelve  have 
Cradle  Rolls  and  eight  Home  Departments.  Twenty  have  more  or 
less  regular  missionary  study  and  four  more  than  this  number  give 
regular  missionary  offerings.  There  are  nineteen  Sunday  school 

87 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


libraries.  Four  schools  have  social  organizations  of  special  or 
recreational  character,  and  fourteen  have  regular  entertainments  for 
the  schools  as  a  whole.  Seven  of  the  organized  classes  hold  regular 
class  socials  and  forty-five  schools  have  the  annual  picnic.  Fifty- 
six  are  open  during  the  whole  year.  Fifteen  persons  have  entered 
professional  Christian  service  from  these  Sunday  schools  in  the  last 
decade,  and  all  but  one  of  these  within  the  last  five  years. 

Church  Organizations 

Church  organizations  among  the  Negroes  enroll  more  than  one- 
half  of  the  net  active  membership.  Women’s  societies  lead  with 
1,600  members  in  forty-eight  organizations;  next  in  order  are  the 
young  people’s  societies,  twenty-one  in  number,  with  700  members ; 
and  then  the  girls’  societies.  The  men  and  boys  have  nearly  half 
a  dozen  each.  Community  life  centers  in  the  Negro  church  to  a 
greater  extent  than  in  the  white  church. 

Church  Program 

Perhaps  the  best  evidence  of  life  and  vision  in  the  Negro  church 
of  these  southern  counties  is  found  in  the  great  interest  shown  in 
recent  years  in  church  extension  in  this  country  as  well  as  in  the 
foreign  field,  specifically  that  of  Africa.  Negro  churches  give  an¬ 
nually  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  for  missionary  enterprises ; 
and  while  this  Negro  contribution  does  not  constitute  a  very  large 
proportion  of  American  missionary  benevolence,  yet  it  indicates  an 
awakening  missionary  conscience  among  the  members  of  Negro 
churches.  Thus  it  is  not  surprising  that  five  of  these  churches  are 
supporting  native  workers  in  the  foreign  field.  Almost  all  of  the 
churches  celebrate  national  holidays,  anniversaries  and  festivals. 
The  interest  of  the  Negro  in  self-improvement  is  evidenced  by  the 
fact  that  forty-five  churches  engage  in  some  form  of  educational  or 
cultural  work.  This  is  a  higher  proportion  than  has  been  found 
among  the  white  churches  in  any  region  in  America ;  and  it  shows 
the  dependence  of  the  Negro  upon  his  church,  as  well  as  the  way  in 
which  he  turns  to  it  for  self-improvement.  Social  and  recreational 
features  enter  into  the  program  of  fifteen  churches,  while  ten  are 
taking  some  interest  in  civic  affairs.  Three-fourths  are  to  be 
depended  upon  to  extend  charity  within  their  local  communities 
where  it  may  be  needed. 


88 


THE  NEGRO  RURAL  CHURCH 


The  Negro  Minister 

Some  observers  point  out  that  the  Negro  preacher  is  a  leader  not 
only  in  things  religious  but  in  the  whole  round  of  Negro  activities 
and  interests.  It  is  this  factor  that  makes  the  Negro  church  so 
much  more  of  a  social  center  than  one  would  otherwise  expect  it 
to  be.  In  a  number  of  welfare  campaigns,  not  only  those  in  con¬ 
nection  with  the  Great  War  but  in  those  for  better  sanitation  and 
other  community  improvements,  meetings  were  held  in  Negro 
churches.  The  Negro  preacher’s  influence  extends  to  economics 
and  his  advice  is  sought  even  in  the  details  of  property  transfers 
and  school  affairs.  He  is,  not  infrequently,  the  custodian  of  the 
association  and  lodge  finances  as  well  as  of  those  of  the  church. 
One  reason  for  this  is  that  most  of  the  Negro  preachers  live  with 
their  people. 

Fifty-six  ordained  ministers  and  one  supply  serve  the  seventy- 
eight  colored  churches  in  these  three  counties.  This  is  a  much 
higher  proportion  of  ordained  ministers  than  is  found  among  the 
whites.  It  is  true,  however,  that  twenty-six  in  all,  or  nearly  half 
these  pastors,  have  other  occupations.  For  the  most  part,  the  toiler 
preacher  is  a  farmer :  but  two  are  students,  four  are  teachers,  one 
is  a  lecturer  among  his  people,  and  the  rest  work  at  odd  jobs.  Cir¬ 
cuits  are  small  and  distances  traveled  are  not  great.  Twenty-seven 
ministers  have  but  one  church  each,  eighteen  have  two  each,  five 
have  three  and  seven  have  four  each  to  serve.  No  minister  has 
more  than  four  churches.  The  average  salary  of  these  ministers 
amounts  to  $574.52  a  year,  which  includes  the  estimated  rental 
value  of  the  parsonages  which  are  furnished  for  fifteen  of  these 
men.  The  average  parsonage  value  varies  greatly  in  different  coun¬ 
ties.  It  is  highest  in  Harford,  Maryland,  with  $646.39;  and  lowest, 
$24.17,  in  Orange,  North  Carolina,  where  there  is  also  the  highest 
proportion  of  ministers  having  other  occupations. 

In  the  matter  of  salaries,  the  Federal  census  reports  that  in  four 
of  the  leading  Negro  denominations  the  average  varies  from  $247 
in  those  paying  the  least,  to  $350  in  the  best  paying  denomination. 
Figures  furnished  by  the  Federal  Council  Commission,  derived  from 
a  study  of  five  counties  in  Arkansas  and  Georgia,  show  a  salary 
average  of  about  $600  for  the  preachers  reported  on;  and  it  may 
safely  be  assumed  that  these  were  the  better  paid  men. 

No  study  of  the  training  of  Negro  preachers  was  made  in  the 
districts  under  survey;  but  some  interesting  and  valuable  data  on 

89 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


this  point  have  been  furnished  by  the  Federal  Council  Commission 
and  by  the  Biblical  and  Research  Departments  of  Tuskegee.  In 
two  Arkansas  counties,  where  inquiries  were  conducted  by  the 
Federal  Council  Commission,  ten  out  of  sixty-three  colored  preach¬ 
ers  reported  graduation  from  high  school  or  college.  In  one  Georgia 
county,  admittedly  above  the  average  in  this  respect,  twelve  out  of 
thirty-one  reported  high  school  or  more  advanced  preparation  ;  but 
in  another  county  of  the  same  state  only  one  out  of  sixteen  was  so 
reported,  while  eleven  were  reported  as  without  training  in  any 
school. 

The  estimates  furnished  by  Tuskegee  for  the  entire  South  place 
the  average  lower,  rating  probably  not  more  than  1  per  cent,  of 
Negro  preachers  as  college  graduates  and  3  per  cent,  as  high  school 
graduates.  Regarding  the  apparent  discrepancy  between  this  esti¬ 
mate  and  the  other  figures,  it  may  be  explained  that  different  classi¬ 
fications  of  schools  probably  were  used,  and  that  while  the  Tuskegee 
estimate  refers  to  graduation,  the  other  figures  may  have  been  based 
on  partial  completion  of  high  school  and  college  courses. 

In  the  matter  of  special  ministerial  training  five  Arkansas  and 
Georgia  counties,  having  a  total  of  145  colored  preachers,  reported 
eleven  of  them,  or  about  7.5  per  cent.,  as  having  had  some  measure 
of  theological  training.  This  figure  corresponds  closely  with  the 
Tuskegee  estimate  that  only  5  per  cent,  have  had  any  systematic 
professional  training. 

Commenting  on  this  whole  educational  situation,  Dr.  George  E. 
Haynes,  of  the  Federal  Council  Commission,  points  out  “the  en¬ 
couraging  fact  that  ministers  and  people  are  beginning  to  realize 
to  a  considerable  degree  that  there  must  be  at  least  a  showing  of 
preparation  on  the  part  of  the  minister,”  and  that  in  a  number  of 
the  cases  studied  the  ministers  were  intellectually  qualified  for  their 
work. 

Regarding  absentee  pastors  the  Federal  Council  office  affords 
the  information  that  in  the  five  Arkansas  and  Georgia  counties  just 
referred  to,  only  about  one-fourth  of  the  rural  Negro  pastors  lived 
within  their  respective  parishes.  “The  rule  to  which  there  are  but 
few  exceptions  in  the  case  of  the  absentee  minister,”  we  are  told, 
“is  that  the  minister  lives  in  a  large  town  or  city,  comes  out  to  the 
once-a-month  church  on  Saturday  evening  or  Sunday  morning,  holds 
a  class  meeting  or  testimony  meeting  Saturday  night,  follows  this 
with  a  service  lasting  nearly  all  day  on  Sunday,  and  leaves  Monday 
morning  for  home,  to  be  seen  no  more  until  the  next  Tneetin’  day.’  ” 

The  facts  brought  out  in  this  study  reveal  clearly  certain  out- 

90 


THE  NEGRO  RURAL  CHURCH 


standing  needs  of  the  Negro  rural  church;  and  the  chapter  would 
not  be  complete  without  some  constructive  suggestions  as  to  how 
these  needs  may  be  met,  and  particularly  as  to  what  white  churches 
and  religious  leaders  may  do  to  help. 

What  is  most  needed  is  a  better-trained  ministry.  This  may  be 
provided  by  the  strengthening  of  Negro  schools  in  general,  and 
especially  by  more  generous  support  of  colleges  and  theological 
seminaries  by  the  educational  and  mission  boards  of  the  white  de¬ 
nominations.  Most  of  the  latter  are  already  doing  something  along 
this  line,  but  the  aggregate  is  far  short  of  the  need.  They  might 
well  consider,  also,  the  desirability  of  a  concerted  program  and  co¬ 
ordinated  effort  in  this  field.  The  churches  might  interest  themselves 
as  well  in  the  general  question  of  popular  Negro  education,  first 
finding  out  the  facts  and  then  bringing  influence  to  bear  in  the 
interest  of  whatever  improvement  appears  to  be  needed  and  prac¬ 
ticable. 

Another  practical  plan,  which  has  already  been  adopted  by  some 
of  the  southern  white  denominations,  is  that  of  providing  summer 
schools  or  conferences  for  Negro  preachers,  and  making  attendance 
possible  by  the  furnishing  of  financial  aid.  One  denomination  in 
the  South  holds  two  such  schools  annually,  reaching  several  hundred 
colored  preachers  with  a  stiff  ten-days’  program. 

In  a  number  of  communities,  notably  in  Chattanooga,  Tennessee, 
the  colored  preachers  have  been  invited  to  membership  in  the  local 
ministerial  associations.  The  results  have  been  excellent,  not  only 
as  affording  encouragement  and  help  to  the  colored  preachers,  but 
also  by  way  of  unifying  the  Christian  forces  of  the  community. 
There  would  seem  to  be  no  reason  why  this  plan  might  not  be 
generally  adopted  with  mutual  profit. 

In  antebellum  days  it  was  a  common  thing  for  white  preachers 
to  occupy  Negro  pulpits.  The  practice  might  well  be  revived  as 
opportunity  offers,  not  in  order,  as  one  southern  writer  puts  it,  “to 
give  the  Negro  patronizing  advice,”  but  to  give  him  the  benefit  of 
the  white  man’s  highest  religious  ideals,  and  to  enlist  his  sympa¬ 
thetic  cooperation  toward  their  realization.  The  interchange  of 
pulpits  may  not  often  be  practicable  in  the  South ;  but  it  might 
sometimes  be  effected  with  profit  in  the  way  of  fuller  understanding 
and  sympathy. 

Negro  choirs,  quartettes  and  soloists  may  be  asked  occasionally 
to  sing  in  white  churches.  This  has  been  done  in  some  of  the 
largest  and  most  conservative  churches  in  the  South  and  has  proved 
quite  popular,  especially  when  the  Negro  “spirituels”  are  sung  with 

91 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


their  characteristic  beauty  and  pathos.  In  many  neglected  districts, 
Negro  Sunday  schools  might  be  organized  in  which  consecrated 
white  men  and  women  would  find  opportunity  for  a  much  needed 
and  most  Christlike  ministry,  to  the  mutual  benefit  of  both  teachers 
and  pupils.* 

*  The  above  suggestions  are  not  offered  as  from  the  outside,  but  sum¬ 
marize  the  considered  opinions  of  a  number  of  southern  leaders  before  whom 
the  results  of  the  Survey  were  laid. 


92 


CHAPTER  X 


Conclusions 

f  I  ^  HIS  study  of  the  Church  and  of  church  life  in  the  South 

1  ought  not  to  be  left  without  some  statement  of  conclusions 
-  and  recommendations.  The  facts  assembled  in  this  volume 
were  reported  by  the  churches  themselves.  The  conclusions  and 
recommendations  that  follow  are  presented,  by  those  responsible 
for  the  investigation,  for  what  they  are  worth  and  as  expressing 
the  views  of  outsiders.  They  have,  however,  been  approved  in  the 
main  by  a  number  of  southern  leaders  to  whom  they  have  been 
submitted.  Many  of  the  suggestions  that  follow  have  also  been 
made  in  another  form  by  the  Rural  Department  of  the  Board  of 
Missions  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South. 

Intangible  Possessions 

An  evaluation  of  the  country  church  in  the  South  must  take  into 
account  certain  of  the  Church’s  intangible  possessions.  The  over¬ 
whelming  majority  of  the  population  in  the  South  is  Protestant. 
The  Church  does  not  face  a  constituency  whose  traditions  and 
feelings  are  either  hostile  or  indifferent  to  its  appeal.  The  loyalty 
to  the  Church  of  those  making  up  its  membership  is  based  on  a 
whole-hearted  emotional  commitment  of  individuals  to  the  religion 
for  which  the  Church  stands.  It  lies,  therefore,  within  the  power 
of  the  Church  to  lead  the  people.  This  was  shown  during  the  war 
when  the  draft  law  could  be  explained  to  communities  in  certain 
sections  only  through  the  Church.  Nowhere  else  did  this  situation 
arise.  Here  are  intangible  possessions  of  great  value  to  organized 
religion. 

Further,  it  should  be  noted  that  the  South  is,  more  markedly 
perhaps  than  any  other  part  of  America,  a  region  of  contrasts. 
The  southern  fringe  of  the  mountain  counties  lie  but  little  more 

C* 

than  an  overnight  journey  from  the  sophisticated  prosperity  of  the 
orange  growers  of  Florida.  In  some  cases  there  are  within  the 
same  county  communities  as  alert  and  progressive  as  any  in  Amer¬ 
ica,  with  all  the  machinery  of  twentieth  century  community  life  and 
organization,  and  other  communities  where  conditions  are  almost 

93 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 

as  they  were  in  the  reconstruction  days  that  followed  the  Civil 
War. 

A  contrast  just  as  striking  is  presented  in  southern  educational 
affairs.  Per  capita  expenditures  per  pupil  in  different  states  and 
even  in  different  counties  within  the  same  state  vary  by  hundreds 
of  per  cent.  The  progressive  communities  are  assets  and  show 
what  can  be  done.  In  the  selection  of  the  six  basic  counties  of  this 
study  the  effort  was  made  to  choose  those  which  would  show  the 


UNCLE  SAM  SPREADS  THE  NEWS  TO  THE  MOUNTAINS 


direction  in  which  the  South  was  tending.  Similarly,  in  these  recom¬ 
mendations,  nothing  has  been  suggested  which  more  progressive 
churches  in  the  rural  South  are  not  either  doing  or  attempting. 

Evangelism 

Evangelism  is  the  greatest  function  of  the  Church.  It  is  the 
keynote  of  the  southern  religious  program.  It  has  yielded,  how¬ 
ever,  uneven  results.  In  the  first  place  the  Church  record  shows 
a  very  high  proportion  of  inactive  members.  When  virtually  one- 
fourth  of  the  members  no  longer  attend  or  contribute,  it  is  fair  to 
conclude  that  evangelism  has  before  it  an  unfinished  task.  How 
uneven  the  results  of  evangelism  have  been  is  shown  by  the  fact 

94 


CONCLUSIONS 


that  church  membership  in  different  counties  within  the  region  and 
even  of  communities  within  adjoining  counties  varies  from  5  per 
cent,  to  over  50  per  cent,  of  the  population.  Obviously  the  evan¬ 
gelistic  effort  of  the  churches  has  been  either  unequally  distributed 
or  unequally  effectual.  Either  the  effort  must  be  exerted  effectually 
in  more  communities  or  other  methods  must  be  found  for  unre¬ 
sponsive  localities.  The  outstanding  suggestion  of  the  Survey  is 
that  there  be  a  greater  and  a  better  evangelism,  one  which  shall 
leave  no  age-  or  sex-group  untouched,  which  shall  overlook  no 
social  or  economic  class ;  an  evangelism  that  will  add  to  the  triumph 
of  conversion  the  sustained  program  that  will  bring  new  converts 
to  the  church  both  to  have  and  to  hold. 

Household  Survey 

Apart  from  the  spiritual  groundwork,  the  best  way  to  prepare 
for  successful  evangelism  is  by  conducting  a  household  survey  of 
the  community,  or,  in  other  words,  by  taking  a  religious  census. 
Such  a  survey  is  often  successfully  made  for  the  pastor,  under  his 
direction,  by  the  organizations  in  his  church.  It  may  be  made  by 
the  men’s  clubs  or  women’s  clubs  or  by  the  young  people’s  organ¬ 
izations,  or  by  apportioning  the  canvass  among  all  the  units.  Often, 
however,  the  pastor  of  a  small  group  of  churches  will  have  to  do 
the  work  himself.  It  will  be  worth  while.  Blanks  for  the  purpose 
may  be  obtained  from  various  sources;  but  it  is  best  for  the  min¬ 
ister  to  get  his  from  denominational  headquarters,  which  can 
furnish  both  blanks  and  advice.  Where  possible,  such  a  survey 
should  be  by  all  the  churches  in  a  given  community ;  but  if  that  is 
not  possible  and  one  church  takes  the  initiative,  denominational 
courtesies  ought  to  be  exchanged.  For  instance,  surveyors  who 
find  any  non-church-going  members  of  a  sister  denomination  ought 
to  send  the  names  of  these  to  the  pastor  of  their  denomination  or 
to  the  pastor  of  the  denomination  for  which  preference  may  be 
expressed.  Moreover,  the  household  survey,  judiciously  managed, 
has  several  important  by-products.  It  enables  the  preacher  to  dis¬ 
cover  what  the  people  are  thinking  about  the  church,  its  functions 
and  opportunities.  It  makes  possible  agreement  on  a  program  of 
church  work  in  which  members  old  and  new  may  be  enlisted.  This 
is  especially  valuable,  because  that  program  is  best  for  a  church 
which  the  church  builds  for  itself  out  of  a  knowledge  of  its  own 
situation.  Such  a  practice  does  more  to  conserve  evangelistic  results 
than  anything  else ;  it  furnishes  a  proper  outlet  for  roused  emotion ; 

95 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


and  furnishes  the  contacts  and  the  information  by  which  the  church 
can  be  linked  more  closely  to  the  community  it  is  serving. 

The  Minister  and  His  Pastorate 

Splendid  as  has  been  the  lay  leadership  in  many  local  churches 
in  the  South,  the  real  key  to  the  situation  is  the  minister.  The 
Survey  shows  that  the  average  minister  has  from  two  to  six  churches, 
necessitating  much  travel,  and  that  he  stays  but  two  years  with  his 
charge.  The  chief  function  of  the  minister  is  preaching.  The 
salary  is  often  meager.  Dr.  Masters  in  his  book,  “The  Country 
Church  in  the  South/’  quotes  two  successful  pastors  of  the  Baptist 
denomination  as  rejoicing  that  their  sons  were  not  entering  the 
ministry.  The  southern  denominations  are  awake  to  the  situation. 
The  suggestions  here  made  are  in  harmony  with  the  policy  advocated 
by  many  of  their  leaders. 

The  denominations  should  take  advantage  of  better  roads  and 
transportation,  wherever  possible,  to  reduce  the  number  of  churches 
on  circuits  by  consolidating  congregations.  There  is  no  excuse  for 
the  large  number  of  overlapping  parishes  of  churches  of  the  same 
denomination.  Fewer  churches  would  mean  less  travel,  more  in¬ 
tensive  and  more  satisfactory  service  and  better  results.  The  whole 
problem  of  the  circuit  arrangement  of  churches  should  be  scien¬ 
tifically  studied  from  the  point  of  view  of  ministerial  service.  Some 
arresting  instances  of  unnecessary  travel  have  been  discovered. 
Three  ministers  of  the  same  denomination  living  within  a  seven- 
mile  radius  traveled  534  miles,  going  and  coming,  to  preach  to  three 
churches  all  within  a  five-mile  radius  and  connected  by  good  roads. 
Several  instances  of  a  minister  traveling  over  400  miles,  round 
trip,  for  a  single  service  were  discovered.  Extreme  cases  these ;  but 
they  call  attention  impressively  to  something  it  should  not  be  dif¬ 
ficult  to  correct.  Nor  can  this  circuit  problem  be  studied  without 
regard  to  the  growing  tendency  of  the  village  churches  to  avail  them¬ 
selves  of  the  full  time  of  a  resident  pastor,  thereby  throwing  the 
weaker,  outlying  country  points  on  their  own  resources.  Since  an 
additional  pastor  is  needed,  in  such  instances,  it  would  be  well  to 
experiment,  to  try  holding  the  old  circuit  together  and  employing 
an  additional  worker  or  assistant  pastor. 

The  rearrangement  of  circuits  will  help  toward  another 
desideratum,  the  longer  pastorate.  Many  are  coming  to  see  the 
need  of  this.  If  it  is  true  that  in  many  communities  the  tenant 
farmer  is  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  disturbing  social  conditions, 
what  shall  be  said  of  the  ministerial  sojourner? 

96 


CONCLUSIONS 


The  southern  rural  pastor  is  as  impermanent  as  his  tenant 
parishioner.  Careful  study  of  the  Methodist  Church,  South,  showed 
that  its  pastors  stayed,  on  the  average,  only  two  years  in  each  parish. 
In  1920,  according  to  data  derived  from  the  Federal  Census,  20.1 
per  cent.,  or  one  in  every  five  persons  operating  farms  in  the  South, 
whether  as  owners  or  as  tenants,  had  been  on  the  same  farm  less 
than  one  year. 

The  church  ought  to  take  a  stand  for  longer  pastorates.  Two 
to  three  years  do  not  give  time  for  a  pastor,  however  gifted  and 
inspired,  to  become  acquainted  with  the  problems  of  his  church  and 
his  parishioners.  With  the  comings  and  goings  of  pastors  as  well 
as  of  members  of  the  flock  and  with  the  vacant  intervals  between 
pastorates,  the  rural  church  in  the  South  does  not  justify  its  service. 
Elsewhere  in  America,  where  a  pastorate  lasts  longer  than  four 
years,  the  results  in  every  department  justify  the  longer  investment 
of  time  by  one  man  in  one  church. 

Perhaps  the  ideal  plan  in  the  South  as  well  as  elsewhere  is  to 
have  a  full-time  resident  minister  for  every  congregation  of  one 
hundred  or  more  active  members.  This  will  be  impossible,  how¬ 
ever,  for  many  years  to  come.  The  people  cannot  support  such 
a  program,  and  there  are  not  enough  ministers.  Hence  the  im¬ 
portance  of  the  considerations  urged ;  for  in  ways  indicated,  exist¬ 
ing  man  power  can  be  utilized  for  greater  production  and  the  job 
itself  be  made  more  attractive  to  the  man. 

The  question  of  compensation  is  still  to  be  considered ;  and 
here  there  is  a  vicious  circle.  Where  a  church  receives  meager 
service  it  pays  a  meager  salary.  Where  a  pastor  is  handicapped  by 
a  meager  salary,  he  either  moves  to  a  more  remunerative  parish  or 
he  abandons  the  Church  and  takes  up  a  secular  occupation.  Yet 
no  country  churches  are  more  generous  than  those  of  the  South 
when  they  do  receive  full-time  service.  A  dozen  of  the  181  min¬ 
isters  in  the  six  basic  counties  are  receiving  salaries  of  between 
$2,000  and  $3,000.  On  the  other  hand,  sixty-three  are  busy  with 
other  occupations  in  addition  to  the  ministry.  Only  by  an  educa¬ 
tional  campaign  reaching  both  the  pastors  and  the  people  will  the 
progressive  denominational  leaders  show  the  evils  attendant  on  this 
division  of  effort. 


Religious  Education 


In  the  sphere  of  religious  life  and  progress,  as  well  as  in  the 
field  of  social  improvement,  education  is  of  the  greatest  importance. 

97 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


The  present  may  be  unable  to  realize  its  ideals ;  but  it  can  teach 
these  ideals  and  make  them  the  practice  of  the  future.  Nowhere 
would  this  procedure  be  of  more  importance  than  in  the  rural 
church  of  the  South.  The  practice  of  some  of  the  denominations 
of  holding  conferences,  summer  assemblies  and  retreats  is  to  be 
commended,  though  these  too  seldom  draw  from  the  rural  churches. 
The  sending  of  deputations  to  churches  in  order  that  by  demonstra¬ 
tion  they  may  learn  better  working  methods  is  of  greater  value. 
The  South  must  in  some  way  reach  all  within  its  local  congrega¬ 
tions  who  can  lead ;  the  minister  must  find  and  use  them  in  a  great 
local  effort  of  religious  education,  as  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  county  work 
secretary  finds  and  uses  his  leaders.  The  central  feature  of  the 
religious  educational  program  is  the  Sunday  school ;  but  only  three 
out  of  every  four  churches  have  such  an  organization.  Many  ex¬ 
isting  Sunday  schools  are  open  only  a  part  of  the  year.  Many 
provide  activities  only  of  the  most  elementary  sort.  They  lack 
graded  lessons,  organized  classes,  a  social  program.  Most  of  them 
even  omit  the  Sunday  school  picnic.  Church  after  church  in  this 
Survey  reported  the  future  bright  except  for  the  problem  of  holding 
the  young  people.  If  the  future  is  bright  without  the  Sunday 
school,  how  much  brighter  that  future  would  be  if  the  Sunday 
school  were  included  in  each  church  program !  The  Sunday  school 
is  the  reservoir  of  church  membership  and  leadership.  A  great 
advance  in  education  has  been  made  in  the  United  States  since  the 
World  War,  with  the  utilization  of  modern  apparatus.  Instruction 
by  the  use  of  the  stereopticon,  the  moving-picture  screen,  and  the 
blackboard  should  become  a  matter  of  denominational  concern;  and 
such  apparatus  ought  to  be  sent  on  tour  among  the  churches  that 
cannot  own  them. 

Cradle  Rolls,  Home  Departments,  organized  classes  with  graded 
lessons,  are  within  the  reach  of  all  churches.  Each  should  also 
have  a  teachers’  training  class  and  a  Workers’  Council  or  Cabinet 
of  Religious  Education  cooperating  with  the  pastor  and  superin¬ 
tendent  for  Sunday  school  improvement.  There  are  now  many 
devices,  inexpensive '  and  yet  artistic,  which  make  it  possible  to 
separate  and  equip  classes  even  in  a  one-room  building.*  These 
could  be  used  to  advantage. 

*  See  “The  Sunday  School  at  Work  in  Town  and  Country,”  by  M.  W. 
Brabham,  General  Sunday  School  Board,  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South. 
Published  by  George  H.  Doran  Co.,  New  York, 


98 


CONCLUSIONS 


Equipment 

A  program  such  as  is  here  indicated  could  be  helped  by  a  larger 
equipment  than  the  average  church  possesses.  Even  the  one-room 
building  will  admit  of  some  improvement.  The  devices  for  sep¬ 
arating  classes  have  already  been  mentioned.  Sand  tables  and  good 
pictures  would  help  when  the  leadership  can  use  them.  A  stereop- 
ticon  would  be  a  great  asset.  One  could  be  purchased  coopera¬ 
tively  by  the  churches  of  a  circuit.  In  all  the  counties  studied 
there  is  not  a  church  that  has  a  playground  and  there  are  virtually 
no  parish  or  community  houses.  As  roads  are  improved  and  travel 
is  made  enough  easier  to  allow  the  consolidation  of  two  or  more 
churches  of  the  same  denomination,  such  consolidations  ought  to 
be  made,  in  many  cases,  and  playgrounds  and  parish  or  community 
houses  provided. 

In  some  few  centers,  perhaps  in  one  in  each  ecclesiastical  unit, 
one  church  of  outstanding  ability  or  strategic  position  might  provide 
full  equipment  and  enter  into  the  fullest  possible  program  of  activi¬ 
ties.  Such  a  church  would  become  not  only  a  demonstration  point, 
but  also  an  experiment  station.  Its  successes  and  its  mistakes  alike 
would  be  valuable. 


Organizations 

In  this  day  of  complicated  social  standards  the  value  to  a  church 
of  organized  age-  and  sex-groups  is  incalculable ;  these  organizations 
for  -  the  young  and  for  the  adults  form  the  membership  into  a 
flexible  and  cohesive  body  and  help  to  interpret  the  church  program 
to  the  community  at  large.  Through  such  organizations  the  church 
offers  its  cooperation  to  agencies  like  the  Red  Cross,  the  Sunday 
School  Association,  the  Young  Men’s  Christian  Association  and  the 
Young  Women’s  Christian  Association,  and  to  such  officials  as  the 
County  Superintendent  of  Education,  the  County  Farm  Demonstra¬ 
tion  and  Home  Economic  Agents  and  to  public-spirited  organiza¬ 
tions  that  are  fighting  the  battle  for  health  and  sanitation. 

But  in  no  other  part  of  the  United  States  has  the  country  church 
so  meager  a  program  of  church  work  as  in  the  South.  In  the 
southern  country  church  there  are  very  few  groups  or  specialized 
organizations.  The  lack  of  organized  groups  of  young  people  has 
already  been  noted.  Among  women,  who  elsewhere  in  America 
constitute  the  steady  church  workers,  the  lack  of  organization  is 
especially  felt.  Nor  is  the  new  interest  in  church  administration 

99 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


that  is  being  generally  shown  by  the  men  evident  in  the  southern 
rural  church.  These  will  come  only  when  a  pastor  stays  long 
enough  in  his  parish  to  organize  the  church  and  link  it  with  the 
life  of  the  community. 


Program 

The  analysis  of  the  church  program  in  the  counties  studied 
throughout  the  South  shows  that  preaching  is  regarded  as  the 
church’s  only  function.  But  a  larger  program  does  not  minimize 
preaching ;  it  really  illustrates  the  spoken  word  in  avenues  that 
connect  the  church  with  the  life  of  the  community.  The  sick  body 
and  the  sick  mind  are  of  importance  as  well  as  the  sick  soul  which 
they  effect.  Sermons,  like  crops,  should  be  diversified.  And  they 
should  contain  a  larger  message  fraught  with  solace  for  the  sick 
of  body,  of  mind  and  of  soul. 

Especially  should  the  effort  be  made  to  have  every  church  open 
every  Sunday,  whether  there  is  a  preaching  service  or  not.  The 
Sunday  school,  particularly  if  its  program  he  enlarged  and  vitalized, 
can  contribute  much.  The  young  people’s  society  can  also  help. 
But  outside  its  usual  work  and  machinery,  the  Church  has  missed 
a  part  of  its  obligation  to  serve  the  community  in  those  broad  ways 
that  make  life  more  worth  living.  One  of  the  real  dangers  of  the 
southern  country  church  is  at  this  point. 

It  is  permitting  the  various  welfare  agencies  to  capitalize  the 
quickened  interest  of  the  people,  to  win  their  allegiance  to  emi¬ 
nently  worth-while  programs — programs  which  could  best  be  devel¬ 
oped  by  the  social  institutions  already  in  the  community,  namely 
the  church  and  the  school.  The  people  themselves  are  beginning 
to  see  this.  The  field  worker  who  visited  five  of  the  six  counties 
and  spent  nearly  four  months  in  the  South,  attending  from  two  to 
five  services  a  Sunday,  did  not  hear  a  single  sermon  from  any 
pulpit  which  was  not  doctrinal  in  character.  During  the  entire 
journey  within  these  counties  there  was  no  word  from  any  Christian 
pulpit  of  any  denomination  with  which  the  field  worker  worshiped 
that  stressed  the  ethics  of  Jesus  as  applied  to  the  level  of  the  every¬ 
day  life  which  people  have  to  live.  This  is  not  to  say  that  the 
experience  of  the  field  worker  is  of  universal  application  in  the 
South,  nor  is  it  to  decry  doctrine :  every  church  must  have  a  well- 
thought  out  philosophy  of  Christianity ;  but  theology  and  philosophy 
are  not  the  whole  of  life  or  of  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ.  That 
which  the  Church  could  have  furnished  is  now  coming  from  other 


100 


CONCLUSIONS 


sources.  The  failure  of  the  Church  to  do  all  that  it  might  is  patent 
in  the  figures  that  have  been  given  in  this  book,  figures  supplied 
by  the  churches  themselves.  It  is  to  be  questioned  whether  the 
Church  can  reach  with  its  theology  those  who  are  now  beyond  its 
influence,  unless  it  brings  a  gospel  applied  in  understandable  terms 
to  the  life  which  they  are  living.  One  of  the  biggest  questions  for 
the  southern  country  church  to-day  is  whether  it  will  oppose  the 
community  movement,  trail  after  it,  or  lead  it. 

It  is  suggested,  therefore,  that  in  every  parish  a  community 
program  should  be  outlined  to  deal  with  the  more  important  of  such 
questions  as  these — better  roads ;  better  housing ;  better  living  con¬ 
ditions  ;  better  schools  and  agriculture ;  the  care  of  the  sick,  the 
indigent  and  the  feeble-minded;  elimination  of  centers  of  vice  and 
moral  infection.  At  least  one  rural  life  institute  dealing  with  such 
topics  might  be  held  each  year.  On  the  constructive  side,  there 
should  be  provision  for  adequate  and  wholesome  amusement  for 
age-  and  sex-groups.  The  Church  should  take  an  interest  in  every¬ 
thing  that  is  of  interest  to  the  people  to  which  it  ministers,  for  there 
is  nothing  which  the  people  do  that  does  not  relate  itself  to  their 
spiritual  life.  It  is  often  not  necessary  for  the  Church  to  do  any¬ 
thing  more  along  this  line  than  to  offer  its  cooperation  to  such 
agencies  as  the  Red  Cross,  the  Sunday  School  Association,  the 
Young  Men’s  Christian  Association,  the  Young  Women’s  Christian 
Association,  and  to  such  officials  as  the  County  Superintendent  of 
Education,  and  County  Farm  Demonstration  and  Home  Economic 
Agent.  Sometimes,  however,  it  must  be  an  actual  leader. 

Finance 

The  suggestions  here  made  regarding  improvement  and  enlarged 
program  raise  the  question  of  finance.  It  is  raised  also  by  the  need 
of  denominational  boards  to  secure  funds  for  the  maintenance  and 
development  of  work  at  home  and  abroad.  Considering  the  amount 
of  pastoral  service  which  the  churches  in  the  South  get,  the  financial 
response  of  the  membership  is  quite  good ;  and  any  considerable 
increase  in  finance  will  probably  depend  on  increased  leadership. 
Still,  the  records  of  those  churches  whose  finances  have  been  ar¬ 
ranged  in  accordance  with  systems  that  have  proved  efficient  indi¬ 
cate  that  the  churches  lacking  such  systems  could  materially  increase 
their  resources  and  the  treasuries  of  their  missionary  organizations 
if  they  would  resort  to  the  every-member  canvass,  budget  and 
envelope  system. 


101 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


If  the  churches  without  these  mere  mechanical  devices  used  by 
a  wise  minority  would  adopt  them  and  use  them  with  equal  skill, 
the  money  to  pay  for  the  equipment  and  activities  suggested  here 
would  soon  be  forthcoming. 

Other  Considerations 

So  much  for  the  task  of  the  Church  in  its  usual  and  accepted 
field  of  work.  There  remain  certain  other  considerations.  Some  of 
these  must  be  passed  over  with  a  word  because  they  did  not  lie 
within  the  original  scope  of  this  study  of  rural  church  life  in  the 
South. 

The  South  led  the  country  in  the  advance  toward  national  pro¬ 
hibition  and  the  churches  of  the  South  played  their  good  part. 
Along  with  every  agency  of  law  and  order  everywhere  in  America, 
the  church  of  the  South  ought  to  stand  for  obedience  to  the  law  of 
the  land.  Since  the  completion  of  the  field  work  of  this  investiga¬ 
tion  in  the  spring  of  1921,  the  Ku  Klux  Klan  has  been  enormously 
expanded.  This  organization  was  not,  however,  a  factor  in  the  life 
of  any  of  the  counties  at  the  time  of  the  investigation.  Then  there 
is  the  Negro  problem.  The  suggestions  of  southern  leaders  them¬ 
selves  on  this  question  have  already  been  offered  in  Chapter  IX. 
The  South  understands  the  Negro,  his  economic  importance  in  the 
new  era  that  is  opening ;  and  southern  white  leaders  are  cooperating 
with  southern  Negro  leaders  in  an  honest  policy  of  good  will  and 
understanding.  The  Commission  on  Interracial  Cooperation  is  a 
well-known  medium  for  arriving  at  this  understanding  so  necessary 
for  the  well-being  of  the  two  races.  But  the  dominating  influence 
in  the  situation  lies  with  the  Church.  The  two  races,  irrespective  of 
color,  share  in  common  the  privileges  of  Christian  democracy. 
Southern  leaders  must  not  fail  to  recognize  that  strong,  well-organ¬ 
ized,  community-serving  churches,  for  the  white  as  well  as  for  the 
black  people,  will  prove  the  essential  helps  along  the  new  industrial 
road  to  which  the  South  is  setting  its  feet.  A  Church  with  a  racial 
problem  in  its  community  should  consult  the  Commission  on  Inter¬ 
racial  Cooperation,  Atlanta,  Ga. 

Beyond  these  considerations  are  still  others  of  a  large  nature  on 
which  the  Survey  did  secure  data  and  of  which  it  may  speak. 

The  Economic  Situation 

In  the  South  more  than  in  any  other  section  of  America  asrri- 
culture  and  the  type  of  life  it  brings  have  overwhelmingly  pre- 

102 


CONCLUSIONS 


dominated.  That  a  period  of  economic  transition  is  now  impend¬ 
ing,  a  period  of  gradual  or  accelerated  transition  from  the  agricul¬ 
tural  to  industrial,  is  evident  in  this  survey  and  from  an 
examination  of  census  figures.  Such  changes  cannot  but  influence 
considerably  the  religious  and  social  institutions  which  are  the  very 
strength  and  genius  of  southern  life.  The  leaders  of  the  South  can 
so  guide  these  natural  processes  of  economic  development  that  the 
more  violent  social  and  religious  dislocations,  familiar  in  the  com¬ 
munities  of  New  England  and  the  Middle  West,  can  be  avoided. 
To  this  end  the  Church  and  the  social  and  educational  agencies  must 
be  employed  to  the  fullest  extent. 


A  PROSPEROUS  FARM  IN  ORANGE  COUNTY,  NORTH  CAROLINA 

These  economic  and  social  transitions  are  inevitably  felt  by  the 
Church.  The  time  has  now  come  when  the  leaders  of  the  South 
will  turn  to  the  Church  and  its  many  agencies  for  guidance  and 
cooperation.  Economic  and  social  problems,  the  ravages  of  nature 
and  disease,  the  contacts  and  interactions  of  country  and  city  life, 
are  vital  questions  with  which  the  southern  Church  must  concern 
itself ;  and  nowhere  will  these  questions  present  themselves  more 
insistently  than  in  the  rural  communities. 

Because  of  the  urgency  of  its  economic  situation  the  southern 
Church  must  give  this  question  consideration.  In  modern  life  the 
Church  is  an  economic  factor  and  an  integral  part  of  our  economy. 
Times  of  plenty  and  times  of  scarcity  are  both  reflected  in  the 
Church  and  strengthen  or  hamper  it  in  its  work.  The  rural  Church 
in  the  South  has  a  real  interest  in  the  economic  welfare  and  future 


103 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


of  the  farmer.  When  a  farmer  who  is  a  church  member  loses 
$3,000  in  a  year  on  his  cotton  because  of  the  ravages  of  the  boll 
weevil,  or  when  the  savings  of  a  life-time  are  destroyed  by  the 
work  of  the  same  insect,  or  by  the  fluctuations  of  the  cotton  market, 
the  Church  shares  in  these  disasters. 

It  behooves  the  country  Church  to  identify  itself  with  the  eco¬ 
nomic  life  of  its  congregations  and  to  become  an  educational  factor 
in  the  various  campaigns  to  improve  conditions.  The  Church 
should  open  its  pulpit  to  the  preachers  of  the  new  agriculture.  It 
may  also  disseminate  knowledge  of  an  economic  nature.  Should 
the  South,  for  instance,  enter  rapidly  into  such  crop  diversification 
as  would  result  in  an  overproduction  of  corn  in  competition  with  the 
Middle  West,  social  and  religious  institutions  in  both  these  regions 
would  suffer. 

In  an  economic  problem  nearer  home,  like  that  created  by  the 
tenant  farmer,  the  Church  can  exert  a  stabilizing  influence.  Already 
the  tenant  farmer  has  weakened  the  Church  because,  a  transient, 
he  has  displaced  an  element  of  the  population  that  was  abiding. 
He  shifts  from  farm  to  farm,  from  one  community  to  another. 
As  Professor  Branson’s  study  shows,  this  type  of  tenancy  produces 
illiteracy,  and  in  its  turn  illiteracy  creates  tenancy.  As  tenancy 
increases  among  white  farmers  the  ratios  of  church  membership 
fall,  and  the  Sunday  school,  which  is  the  reservoir  of  membership, 
loses  vitality  and  recruits.  Economically,  the  church  should  be 
more  concerned  with  the  problem  of  reaching  the  tenant  farmer 
and  attaching  him  to  the  community  by  more  lasting  bonds,  than 
it  should  be  with  the  problem  of  reaching  the  owner  operator.  In 
any  case,  since  the  Church  ministers  to  both  these  types  in  its  mem¬ 
bership,  it  should  perform  the  important  mission  of  interpreting 
the  one  to  the  other.  Until  the  Church  can  make  conditions  of 
tenancy  more  favorable,  the  transient  tenant  will  hold  himself  aloof 
from  church  life  as  well  as  from  community  life. 

A  page  from  the  program  of  the  mission  church  in  a  great 
agricultural  country  like  India  may  furnish  suggestions  for  the 
southern  tenant  problem.  Here  the  mission  church  improves  the 
term  of  tenancy,  or  interprets  the  rural  credit  system  to  the  tenant 
so  that  he  can  purchase  on  favorable  terms.  While  this  suggestion 
comes  from  a  distant  field,  it  shows  that  the  Church  may  serve  the 
farmer  tenant  and  the  landlord  in  its  membership  in  a  way  to  give 
impetus  to  associations  of  tenants  and  owners,  or  farmers  in  gen¬ 
eral,  independent  of  the  Church,  but  composed  of  church  members. 

The  Church  cannot,  however,  fill  this  great  role  until  it  has 

101 


CONCLUSIONS 


become  in  the  community  a  social  and  religious  power  to  which 
men  turn  with  their  differences  and  troubles.  It  must  bind  itself  to 
every  member  of  its  congregation,  whether  a  struggling  tenant  or  a 
prosperous  land-owner,  by  intimate  ties  of  loyalty  and  service. 
When  the  tenant  farmer  feels  that  he  can  derive  moral  and  economic 
support  from  the  Church  in  improving  his  working  and  living  con¬ 
ditions  ;  when  the  landowner  feels  that  a  tenant  member  in  his 
church  is  the  sort  of  person  to  whom  he  can  entrust  his  land,  or 
sell  his  land  upon  reasonable  terms,  then  the  Church  has  become 
a  real  community  factor.  Moreover,  until  such  ties  are  established. 


ONCE  A  CROSSROAD  STORE 

A  church  made  a  club  house  out  of  this  deserted  building 


until  the  tenant  feels  that  his  living  and  working  environment  is 
favorable,  that  his  children  are  receiving  the  benefits  of  a  full, 
well-balanced  program  in  the  Sunday  school,  he  will  remain  a  dis¬ 
turbing  force  in  southern  community  life. 

Especially  must  the  Church  be  forearmed  because,  as  the  new 
industrial  era  of  the  South  develops,  the  tenants  may  largely  dis¬ 
appear  in  some  communities,  may  be  driven  to  or  become  attracted 
by  the  growing  industrial  centers  with  their  better  wages  and  their 
crowded  living  conditions.  In  this  event  the  agricultural  South 
and  its  institutions  may  face  a  serious  situation. 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


Good  Roads 

Of  the  churches  covered  by  this  investigation,  from  two-thirds 
to  three-quarters  reported  poor  roads  as  one  of  the  chief  causes  of 
low  attendance  and  membership.  But  the  Church  is  a  community 
institution,  officially  tax-free  because  any  and  all  may  share  its 
religious  and  social  services.  If  bad  roads  interfere  with  the 
rendering  of  these  services,  then  the  Church  may  well  lead  in  the 
movement  for  road  improvement.  If  the  question  of  a  bond  issue 
for  highway  betterment  arises,  the  influence  of  a  public  institution 
like  the  Church  is  incalculable.  None  is  a  better  judge  of  the  evil 
results  of  bad  roads  than  is  the  pastor :  his  flock  cannot  regularly 
reach  the  church,  and  he  visits  his  flock  with  difficulty.  What  more 
inspiring  example  than  that  of  the  Alsatian  pastor,  John  Frederick 
Oberlin,  who  with  pick  and  shovel  began  constructing  the  road 
that  revolutionized  the  life  of  his  little  community ! 

Good  roads  are  of  still  greater  importance.  They  link  com¬ 
munities,  they  enlarge  community  boundaries,  they  make  consolida¬ 
tion  of  schools  and  churches  possible.  When,  for  instance,  roads 
enlarge  communities,  one  church  can  often  do  the  work  of  two. 
Larger  congregations  are  formed,  with  a  natural  increase  of  social 
and  religious  activities.  Then  the  pastor  will  receive  adequate 
support,  and  stay  long  enough  to  do  constructive  parochial  work. 

Health 

Jesus  said:  “Heal  the  sick.”  While  the  Church  has  a  definite 
share  in  social  and  religious  problems,  it  cannot  directly  care  for 
the  sick.  The  pastor  will  always,  however,  bring  to  the  bedside  of 
his  parishioner  the  consolations  of  religion.  But  the  social  responsi¬ 
bility  of  the  Church  to  the  community  in  all  that  concerns  spiritual 
and  moral  welfare  includes  matters  like  those  of  health  and  sanita¬ 
tion.  Ignorance  leads  to  suffering,  and  it  is  through  the  publicity  of 
school  and  church  that  a  campaign  for  better  health  is  most  suc¬ 
cessful.  The  ravages  of  the  hookworm  disease  in  the  southern 
mountains  and  elsewhere  are  lessening  as  a  result  of  proper  treat¬ 
ment  and  preventative  measures.  The  need  of  sanitation  and  of 
the  reduction  of  the  high  typhoid  rate  in  many  a  southern  county 
presents  a  task  for  the  Church.  The  Church  cannot  enter  into  a 
public  health  campaign :  but  it  can  cooperate  by  giving  publicity, 
approval  and  the  weight  of  its  prestige  to  all  movements  that  aim 
to  improve  the  public  health  and  the  social  well-being.  During  the 

106 


CONCLUSIONS 


War,  it  successfully  cooperated  with  agencies  like  the  Red  Cross ; 
and  it  should  continue  to  keep  in  touch  with  all  such  agencies. 


Education 

From  one  community  interest,  the  Church  goes  to  another. 
None  is  more  important  than  that  of  good  schools.  It  is  impossible 
to  overemphasize  the  value  of  these  to  the  South.  He  who  is 
illiterate  is  not  fulfilling  his  duty  as  an  American  citizen.  An 
illiterate  can  hardly  be  urged  to  search  the  Scriptures.  The  schools 


A  RURAL  CLINIC 

not  only  make  for  a  better  democracy  but  through  them  is  also 
developed  the  responsive  intelligence  to  which  the  Church  can  appeal, 
and  through  which  the  Church  can  most  effectively  interpret  its 
social  and  religious  message.  They  are  indispensable  adjuncts  to 
the  Sunday  school.  In  many  cases  good  schools  for  his  children 
solve  the  tenant  farmer’s  problem.  But  the  schools  in  the  South 
are  too  often  the  victims  of  board  politics.  A  teacher  should  be 
appointed  for  her  ability  to  teach  instead  of  because  of  her  influ¬ 
ence  with  the  school  board.  Moreover,  the  teacher  should  not 
suffer  discrimination  because  of  her  denominational  belief. 

107 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


Colbert  County  furnishes  an  example  in  point  which  should  be 
followed  throughout  the  South.  Its  story  should  be  told  wherever 
possible.  In  this  county  the  people  themselves,  under  the  leadership 
of  the  County  Superintendent  of  Schools,  have  risen  to  provide 
better  education  for  their  children.  They  have  so  greatly  improved 
their  schools  that  one  comparing  those  of  to-day  with  those  of  five 
years  ago  would  feel  that  here  a  miracle  had  been  wrought.  Public 
opinion  is  being  created  which  permits  country  boys  and  country 
girls  to  continue  their  studies  longer  than  used  to  be  customary. 
More  than  this,  the  school  has  become  a  community  servant,  has 
entered  into  the  life  of  the  people  to  such  an  extent  that  much  of 
the  social  activity  of  the  community  centers  upon  this  institution 
which  the  people  themselves  finance  and  therefore  own.  A  notable 
increase  in  community  spirit  has  resulted,  and  the  people  have 
developed  a  far  more  intelligent  interest  in  the  future  of  the  county 
and  the  county’s  most  valuable  assets,  her  boys  and  girls. 

Interchurch  Cooperation 

No  one  church  can  do  all  the  things  that  have  been  suggested 
in  these  conclusions.  In  one  community  one  need  is  outstanding ; 
and  in  a  neighboring  community,  another.  As  has  been  said,  that 
church  and  that  community  is  most  fortunate  whose  program  can 
be  locally  developed  and  executed.  But  the  suggestions  made  here 
offer  real  tasks  for  the  Church,  and  progress  will  be  most  rapid 
if  there  can  be  some  Interchurch  cooperation. 

Religious  problems  cannot  be  solved  without  an  exchange  of 
information  by  the  religious  bodies  concerned,  without  conferences 
and  cooperation.  If  loyalty  to  a  denominational  organization  inter¬ 
feres  with  loyalty  to  the  Kingdom  of  God,  a  kind  of  rivalry  will 
ensue  in  which  the  people  will  be  neglected  and  forgotten.  Inter¬ 
church  cooperation  has  lagged  in  the  South  for  many  reasons  which 
need  not  be  discussed  here.  Individualism,  small  congregations, 
itinerant  preachers  zealous  to  keep  up  their  own  organizations,  are 
a  few  of  the  causes.  The  time  of  cooperation  has  now  come  if  the 
country  church  of  the  South  is  to  forge  ahead.  This  cooperation 
can  be  both  local  and  on  a  county  basis.  Luckily  it  can  create  a 
Christian  community  program  without  regard  to  denominational 
lines,  which  so  far  as  worship  goes  may  be  kept  separate.  Begin¬ 
nings  have  already  been  made  to  work  this,  but  on  a  county  basis. 
County  Sunday  school  associations  are  numerous  in  the  South. 
Colbert  County  had,  until  the  financial  depression,  a  county  council 

108 


CONCLUSIONS 


of  religious  education  with  a  paid  secretary  which  was  bringing 
together  most  of  the  church  members  in  a  broad-gauge  program  of 
leadership,  training,  religious  education  and  health,  as  well  as  of 
missionary  activities,  in  the  less  favored  sections  of  the  county. 

Th e  greatest  obstacles  to  progress  along  this  line,  as  along  the 
line  of  elimination  of  overchurching,  are  the  ministers  themselves. 
They  hold  the  future  in  their  hands.  If  they  rise  to  the  oppor¬ 
tunity  made  theirs  by  the  influence  the  Church  now  holds  in  the 
South,  the  country  church  in  the  South  will  have  a  remarkable 
future.  If  they  fail  to  grasp  this  opportunity  the  Church  may  be 
superseded  and  the  enlarged  program  for  which  it  might  be  re¬ 
sponsible  may  pass  to  the  hands  of  the  others. 

A  keen  observer  says :  “Religion  in  the  South  is  infinitely  puz¬ 
zling.  It  is  a  paradox,  dead  and  yet  alive,  unprogressive  and 
narrow  but  a  powerful  force.”  The  future  of  the  country  church  in 
the  South  depends  upon  how  this  force  is  directed  in  the  years  that 
are  just  ahead. 


109 


APPENDICES 


. 


APPENDIX  I 


Methodology  and  Definitions 


THE  method  used  in  the  Town  and  Country  Surveys  of  the 
Interchurch  World  Movement  and  of  those  of  the  Com¬ 
mittee  on  Social  and  Religious  Surveys  differs  from  the 
method  of  earlier  surveys  in  this  field  chiefly  in  the  following  par¬ 
ticulars  : 

1.  “Rural”  was  defined  as  including  all  population  living  out¬ 
side  of  incorporated  places  of  over  5,000.  Previous  surveys  usually 
excluded  all  places  of  2,500  population  or  over,  which  follows  the 
United  States  Census  definition  of  “rural.” 

2.  The  local  unit  for  the  assembling  of  material  was  the  com¬ 
munity,  regarded  usually  as  the  trade  area  of  a  town  or  village 
center.  Previous  surveys  usually  took  the  minor  civil  division  as 
the  local  .unit.  The  disadvantage  of  the  community  unit  is  that 
census  and  other  statistical  data  are  seldom  available  on  that  basis, 
thus  increasing  both  the  labor  involved  and  the  possibility  of  error. 
The  great  advantage  is  that  it  presents  its  results  assembled  on  the 
basis  of  units  which  have  real  social  significance,  which  the  minor 
civil  division  seldom  has.  This  advantage  is  considered  as  more 
than  compensating  for  the  disadvantage. 

3.  The  actual  service  area  of  each  church,  as  indicated  by  the 
residence  of  its  members  and  adherents,  was  mapped  and  studied. 
This  was  an  entirely  new  departure  in  rural  surveys. 

Four  chief  processes  were  involved  in  the  actual  field  work  of 
these  surveys : 

1.  The  determination  of  the  community  units  and  of  any  sub¬ 
sidiary  neighborhood  units  included  within  them.  The  community 
boundaries  were  ascertained  by  noting  the  location  of  the  last  family 
on  each  road  leading  out  from  a  given  center  who  regularly  traded 
at  that  center.  These  points,  indicated  on  a  map,  were  connected 
with  each  other  by  straight  lines.  The  area  about  the  given  center 
thus  enclosed  was  regarded  as  the  community. 

2.  The  study  of  the  economic,  social  and  institutional  life  of 
each  community  as  thus  defined. 


113 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


3.  The  location  of  each  church  in  the  county,  the  determination 
of  its  parish  area  and  the  detailed  study  of  its  equipment,  finance, 
membership,  organization,  program  and  leadership. 

4.  The  preparation  of  a  map  showing,  in  addition  to  the  usual 
physical  features,  the  boundaries  of  each  community,  the  location, 
parish  area  and  circuit  connections  of  each  church  and  the  residence 
of  each  minister. 

The  following  are  the  important  definitions  used  in  the  making 
of  these  surveys  and  the  preparation  of  the  reports : 

Geographical 

City — a  center  of  over  5,000  population.  Not  included  within 
the  scope  of  these  surveys  except  as  specifically  noted. 

Town — a  center  with  a  population  of  from  2,501  to  5,000. 

Village — a  center  with  a  population  of  from  251  to  2,500. 

Hamlet — any  clustered  group  of  people  not  living  on  farms, 
whose  numbers  do  not  exceed  250. 

Open  Country — the  farming  area,  excluding  hamlets  and  other 
centers. 

Country — used  in  a  three-fold  division  of  population  included 
in  scope  of  survey  into  Town,  Village  and  Country.  Includes 
Hamlets  and  Open  Country. 

Town  and  Country — the  whole  area  covered  by  these  surveys, 
i.e.,  all  population  living  outside  of  cities. 

Rural— used  interchangeably  with  Town  and  Country. 

Community — that  unit  of  territory  and  of  population  charac¬ 
terized  by  common  social  and  economic  interests  and  experiences ; 
an  “aggregation  of  people  the  majority  of  whose  interests  have  a 
common  center.”  Usually  ascertained  by  determining  the  normal 
trade  area  of  each  given  center.  The  primary  social  grouping  of 
sufficient  size  and  diversity  of  interests  to  be  practically  self-suffic¬ 
ing  in  ordinary  afifairs  of  business,  civil  and  social  life. 

Neutral  Territory — any  area  not  definitely  included  within  the 
area  of  one  community.  Usually  an  area  between  two  or  more 
centers  and  somewhat  influenced  by  each,  but  whose  interests  are 
so  scattered  that  it  cannot  definitely  be  assigned  to  the  sphere  of 
influence  of  any  one  center. 

Neighborhood — a  recognizable  social  grouping  having  certain 
interests  in  common  but  dependent  for  certain  elemental  needs  upon 
some  adjacent  center  within  the  community  area  of  which  it  is 
located. 


114 


APPENDIX  I 


Rural  Industrial — pertaining  to  any  industry  other  than  farming 
within  the  Town  and  Country  area. 

Population 

Foreigner — refers  to  foreign-born  and  native-born  of  foreign 
parentage. 

New  Americans — usually  includes  foreign-born  and  native-born 
of  foreign  or  mixed  parentage,  but  sometimes  refers  only  to  more 
recent  immigration.  In  each  case  the  exact  meaning  is  clear  from 
the  context. 


The  Church 

Parish — the  area  within  which  the  members  and  regular  at¬ 
tendants  of  a  given  church  live. 

Circuit — two  or  more  churches  combined  under  the  direction  of 
one  minister. 

Resident  Pastor — a  church  whose  minister  lives  within  its  parish 
area  is  said  to  have  a  resident  pastor. 

Full-time  Resident  Pastor — a  church  with  a  resident  pastor  who 
serves  no  other  church  and  follows  no  other  occupation  than  the 
ministry  is  said  to  have  a  full-time  resident  pastor. 

Part-time  Pastor — a  church  whose  minister  either  serves  another 
church  also,  or  devotes  part  of  his  time  to  some  regular  occupation 
other  than  the  ministry,  or  both,  is  said  to  have  a  part-time  minister. 

Non-Resident  Member — one  carried  on  the  rolls  of  a  given 
church  but  living  too  far  away  to  permit  regular  attendance ;  gen¬ 
erally,  any  member  living  outside  the  community  in  which  the 
church  is  located  unless  he  is  a  regular  attendant. 

Inactive  Member — one  who  resides  within  the  parish  area  of 
the  church  but  who  neither  attends  its  services  nor  contributes  to 
its  support. 

Net  Active  Membership — the  resultant  membership  of  a  given 
church  after  the  number  of  non-resident  and  inactive  members  is 
deducted  from  the  total  on  the  church  roll. 

Per  Capita  Contributions  or  Expenditures — the  total  amount 
contributed  or  expended  divided  by  the  number  of  the  net  active 
membership. 

Budget  System — A  church  which  at  the  beginning  of  the  fiscal 
year  makes  an  itemized  forecast  of  the  entire  amount  of  money 
required  for  its  maintenance  during  the  year  as  a  basis  for  a  canvass 

115 


CHURCH  LIFE  IN  THE  RURAL  SOUTH 


of  its  membership  for  funds  is  said  to  operate  on  a  budget  system 
with  respect  to  its  local  finances.  If  amounts  to  be  raised  for  de¬ 
nominational  or  other  benevolences  are  included  in  the  forecast  and 
canvass,  it  is  said  to  operate  on  a  budget  system  for  all  moneys 
raised. 

Adequate  Financial  System — Three  chief  elements  are  recog¬ 
nized  in  an  adequate  financial  system :  a  budget  system,  an  annual 
every-member  canvass  and  the  use  of  envelopes  for  the  weekly  pay¬ 
ment  of  subscriptions. 

Receipts — Receipts  have  been  divided  under  three  heads : 

a.  Subscriptions,  that  is,  money  received  in  payment  of  annual 
pledges. 

b.  Collections,  that  is,  money  received  from  free-will  offerings 
at  public  services. 

c.  All  other  sources  of  revenue,  chiefly  proceeds  of  entertain¬ 
ments  and  interest  on  endowments. 

Salary  of  Minister — Inasmuch  as  some  ministers  receive  in  ad¬ 
dition  to  their  cash  salary  the  free  use  of  a  house,  while  others  do 
not,  a  comparison  of  the  cash  salaries  paid  is  misleading.  In  all 
salary  comparisons,  therefore,  the  cash  value  of  a  free  parsonage 
is  arbitrarily  rated  as  $250  a  year  and  that  amount  is  added  to  the 
cash  salary  of  each  white  minister  with  free  parsonage  privileges. 
Thus  an  average  salary  stated  as  $1,450  is  equivalent  to  $1,200  cash 
and  the  free  use  of  a  house. 


116 


APPENDIX  II 


Bibliography 


THE  complete  bibliography  covering  the  southern  area  and 
particularly  the  six  counties  under  consideration  would  con¬ 
sume  too  much  space  to  be  given  here.  Local  newspapers, 
church  diaries,  county  records  and  reports  and  many  similar  sources 
of  information  were  consulted.  The  Federal  Census  reports  from 
1890  to  date  and  the  reports  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Edu¬ 
cation  were  also  used,  as  were  the  State  Reports  on  Education  on 
agriculture,  health,  education,  road  building,  etc.  The  W cekly  News 
Letter  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina  proved  especially  valua¬ 
ble,  as  did  the  annual  publication  of  the  University  Club  at  that 
institution.  Special  mention,  however,  should  be  made  of  the  fol¬ 
lowing  articles  or  books  of  recent  origin : 

“The  South  and  the  New  Citizenship.” 

The  Survey — entire  issue  of  April  3,  1920. 

“The  Southern  Highlander  and  His  Homeland,”  John  C.  Camp¬ 
bell,  Russell  Sage  Foundation,  1921. 

“Our  Southern  Highlanders,”  Horace  Kephart,  Macmillan  Com¬ 
pany,  1921. 

Bulletin  on  the  Church  and  Landless  Men,  University  of  North 
Carolina. 

“Rural  Child  Welfare,”  Edward  Clopper,  Macmillan  Company, 
1922. 

Reports  of  the  Social  and  Political  Congress. 

Reports  of  the  Southern  Sociological  Congress. 


117 


UNIQUE  STUDIES  OF  RURAL  AMERICA 


TOWN  AND  COUNTRY  SERIES  TWELVE  VOLUMES 

MADE  UNDER  THE  DIRECTION  OF 

Edmund  deS.  Brunner,  Ph.D. 

What  the  Protestant  Churches  Are  Doing  and  Can  Do 
for  Rural  America — The  Results  of  Twenty- 
six  Intensive  County  Surveys 


Description  _  Publication  Date 

(1)  Church  and  Community  Survey  of 

Salem  County,  N.  J .  Ready 

(2)  Church  and  Community  Survey  of 

Pend  Oreille  County,  Washington  Ready 

(3)  Church  and  Community  Survey  of 

Sedgwick  County,  Kansas  .  Ready 

(4)  Church  Life  in  the  Rural  South .  Ready 

(5)  The  Old  and  New  Immigrant  on  the 

Land,  as  seen  in  two  Wisconsin 
Counties  .  Ready 

(6)  Rural  Church  Life  in  the  Middle 

West  .  Ready 

(7)  The  Country  Church  in  Colonial 

Counties  .  Ready 

(8)  Irrigation  and  Religion,  a  study  of  two 

prosperous  California  Counties  ....  Ready 

(9)  The  Church  on  the  Changing  Frontier  Ready 

(10)  The  Country  Church  in  Industrial 

Zones  .  Ready 

(11  &  12)  The  Town  and  Country  Church 

in  the  United  States  (2  vols.) .  Forthcoming 


a  Id  hey  are  fine  pieces  of  work  and  examples  of  what  we  need  to 
have  done  on  a  large  scale.” — Dr.  Charles  A.  Ellwood,  Dept,  of 
Sociology,  University  of  Missouri. 

“I  am  heartily  appreciative  of  these  splendid  results.” — Rev. 
Charles  S.  Macfarland,  Genl.  Secy.,  Federal  Council  of  the  Churches 
of  Christ  in  America. 

Published  by  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY,  New  York 

FOR 

COMMITTEE  ON  SOCIAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SURVEYS 


370  SEVENTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 


Date  Due 

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